Having had to come up with simulated datasets before, whoever faked this data clearly had no understanding of how the random number generator in excel/elsewhere would work.
It is EXTREMELY easy to generate a normally distributed dataset, with a zero lower bound. Literally one line of code/formulas in excel e.g., =max(NORMINV(RAND(),10000,5000),0). We learned it in the first three weeks of my (graduate) intro stats class. You could then apply that formula to however many data points you needed, and in this case pass in a well known mean for # of miles driven per year.
It's been 6 years since I took that class and I still remember the formula. I suppose it's possible that Ariely, a professor with decades of years of experience as a researcher, who had to have taken more stats classes than me (literally one) to get his PhD, would be dumb enough to use a random # generator.
But that is an awfully, awfully stats illiterate mistake to make.
Certainly, his team would have something to gain by a fascinating finding, though at this point Ariely already had two massively successful books prior to this finding. But the analyst at XYZ insurance that didnt want to be bothered to pull an actual dataset from SQL or oracle also couldve just been lazy...
It is EXTREMELY easy to generate a normally distributed dataset, with a zero lower bound. Literally one line of code/formulas in excel e.g., =max(NORMINV(RAND(),10000,5000),0). We learned it in the first three weeks of my (graduate) intro stats class. You could then apply that formula to however many data points you needed, and in this case pass in a well known mean for # of miles driven per year.
It's been 6 years since I took that class and I still remember the formula. I suppose it's possible that Ariely, a professor with decades of years of experience as a researcher, who had to have taken more stats classes than me (literally one) to get his PhD, would be dumb enough to use a random # generator.
But that is an awfully, awfully stats illiterate mistake to make.
Certainly, his team would have something to gain by a fascinating finding, though at this point Ariely already had two massively successful books prior to this finding. But the analyst at XYZ insurance that didnt want to be bothered to pull an actual dataset from SQL or oracle also couldve just been lazy...