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I just noticed the statistics tag. If this tag was applied consistently to the site then (almost?) all questions would have this tag. Should it be deleted?

I would suggest removing the tag.

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Do we still want this tag?

I am not seeing much value there and a lot of opportunities for bad tagging. I am favoring removal and adding to the intrinsic tags for the site.

edit: mbq asked me to remove this tag in chat so I did.

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  • $\begingroup$ Where are the intrinsic tags listed or indicated? $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Apr 12 '11 at 21:38
  • $\begingroup$ @whuber the blacklist is developer only, but intrinsic tags can safely be assumed to be "apple" on apple, "wordpress" on wordpress, "android" on android, "math" on math.. and so forth. $\endgroup$
    – Jeff Atwood
    Apr 13 '11 at 0:37
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks. And "Cross_Validated" on CV? :-) $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Apr 13 '11 at 1:29
  • $\begingroup$ RE edit: So be it. I won't miss it. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Apr 13 '11 at 1:30
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"Statistics" has several senses.

One of them is overly general. It's inappropriate on this site.

Within the field, though, a "statistic" is a summary of data. Some questions have that as their primary focus: what statistic would be appropriate for my situation? What is the sampling distribution of this statistic? What are the pros and cons of using this or that statistic in the analysis of my problem? Etc.

I recently went through and removed many of the unwarranted "statistics" tags. (Due to lack of time I didn't go all the way through the list, though.) Some deserved to remain in the second sense.

Perhaps a good solution is to rename "statistics" to "statistic" and update its wiki appropriately.

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When it is about the whole science, as in 2 stats and ml questions it is ok IMO. In the other cases I agree.
The problem with this tag is that when you try to post a question it asks for some tags... and what is your first idea if you don't have any that makes sense? So I think it is something we will be still fighting with.

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  • $\begingroup$ see my answer -- we sure we still want this tag now? $\endgroup$
    – Jeff Atwood
    Apr 12 '11 at 6:29
  • $\begingroup$ @Jeff I agree, and I thought it was dead... I'll investigate. $\endgroup$
    – user88
    Apr 12 '11 at 6:46
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It similar to programming tag on SO, it tends to attract meta question about the topic. I think it's fine as long as a question passes usual criteria and is made a CW when appropriate.

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