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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 17, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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In the US, men kill themselves about 4 times more often than women. Why? One can argue that men have it harder in life than women (although I'm not sure that's true), but my anecdotal experience of observing people certainly does not suggest that women are 4 times more happy than men on average.

The proper comparison isn't between the happiness of the average man and the average woman, but of those truly miserable how many are men.

If happiness of men and happiness of women both follow the normal distribution with average happiness of men and women being equal, but happiness of women having a smaller variance, the number of men below any value smaller than the mean, will be greater than the number of women below the same value.

Good point!