3

I am thinking of a tag for questions about 'how many...', where the answer is (in part) an objective number.

For instance:

Exact name open to discussion: 'statistics', 'quantitative', 'frequencies', etc.

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

I think it's a neat idea. However, I have two small objections:

  1. would be a meta tag

  2. Many questions use "statistics" (in particular corpus data), so in principle many questions could be tagged. (You might say to tag only if the question asks specifically about statistics, but that is not how tags are supposed to work...)

We can still decide to create the tag, but I think the above points are worth considering.

5
  • The two criteria for metatags from the link are: "they tell you nothing at all about the content of the question" and "the tag commonly means different things to different people". A tag meaning 'this question has to do with numbers' meets neither.
    – Mathieu Bouville
    Feb 2, 2019 at 8:49
  • "Many questions use 'statistics' ": perhaps, but one should "use tags that describe things or concepts that are essential, not incidental to your question".
    – Mathieu Bouville
    Feb 2, 2019 at 8:52
  • Fair enough, but I wouldn't be sure whether [statistics] should be applied to questions like "How commonly is watakushi used as a reading for 私?". Statistics seems to be more "essential" than "incidental" for this type of question, but since this type of data is usually very hard to come by, answers will probably focus on a subjective assessment, such as "watakushi is extremely common and I hear it at least three times every day". Maybe the question is ill-posed, but that doesn't make the choice whether to tag or not any easier.
    – Earthliŋ Mod
    Feb 2, 2019 at 10:58
  • Your point is that the question will be quantitative, but the answer may be merely semi-quantitative. Not so much subjective questions as questions hard to answer precisely. "I hear watakushi at least three times every day" or "I spent 3 years in Japan and never heard watakushi" may not be as precise as one wishes, but they still give information. Incomplete answers happen in other cases. E.g. with 'history' answer ("I saw this word in an 18th century text but not before"): incomplete but better than nothing, and in any case still 'a question about history'.
    – Mathieu Bouville
    Feb 2, 2019 at 12:19
  • So, for the question about watakushi you would tag it [statistics]?
    – Earthliŋ Mod
    Feb 2, 2019 at 12:40

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .