Talk:Statistical model

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Could this be explained for the layman?

Introduction

The Introduction to this article should be generally readable by people who have little training in statistics. The Introduction was previously in need of improvement.

Then someone (Kri) made a change so that the Introduction began with this sentence: "A statistical model is a formalization of stochastic relationships between variables in the form of mathematical equations". The sentence is incomprehensible to most people, because they do not know what stochastic means. The justification for the change was that the term is "explained later in the paragraph". It is didactically awful to use a technical term and define the term later; a term should first be defined, at least intuitively, and then used.

I have reverted the change. I have also made an edit to hopefully improve clarity, as well as to correct an error (it is not necessary, or even usual, that the true model is in P). Further work is need though.
86.149.160.165 (talk) 17:02, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you explaining why you reverted my edit this time; reverting someone's edits without explanation is usually not a good idea as it easily can be seen as destructive to the one who made the first edit, since he obviously thought that he did something creative himself.

As for my justification for the edit, I didn't mean that the term stochastic was explained later in the paragraph; what I meant was that the fact that the relationships are stochastic was stated later in the paragraph (although I used the word "explained" instead of "stated"). So I thought, why not make that statement about the relationships already the first time they are mentioned? But if you thought it was incomprehensible to most people, then maybe it was. —Kri (talk) 21:59, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I should have explained the first time, I definitely agree, and will do so in the future. And I really appreciate your elaborating.
[I'm the same editor as before.] 86.152.238.35 (talk) 13:31, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]