Questions tagged [answers]

Questions about answers: how to answer, whether specific answers are appropriate, and so forth.

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9 votes
3 answers
141 views

How to vote on partial answers?

At times I see that someone will provide an answer that, while not directly addressing all of the points in a question, will nonetheless give a good insight on something that is either partially ...
Shawn Hemelstrand's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
134 views

Distribution of question and answer votes on CV

My question is simple theoretically, but probably not so simple practically... Is there a way to check the distribution of question votes vs answer votes on CV? My assumption is that people are more ...
Shawn Hemelstrand's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
177 views

When should an answer be given as opposed to just giving a hint

It's my impression that on this site (and https://math.stackexchange.com/) that many times questions aren't answered but just hints in the comments are given. (This is different on https://...
JimB's user avatar
  • 3,704
-8 votes
3 answers
264 views

Answering a question other than the one that is asked

There are a few topics on this site (unbalanced data, up-weighting, accuracy, F1 score, precision/recall etc) that whenever a user asks a question regarding one of these methods/metrics, a few high ...
astel's user avatar
  • 1,528
0 votes
0 answers
94 views

Difficulty finding an answer to a specific question and difficulty with wording

3 months ago I asked Probability Mass Function making the Truncated Normal Discrete I can't seem to get enough attention to get multiple attempts to answer the question probably because of my poor ...
George Ntoulos's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
203 views

What are some "best practices" for editing to improve a post?

We already have another excellent question on CV.SE setting out editing dos and don'ts, but that mostly focuses on the limitations that apply to editing other people's posts, rather than the substance ...
Ben's user avatar
  • 124k
14 votes
2 answers
221 views

What to do when an answer is wrong, but a comment box is too small?

Sometimes a user offers an Answer which can be proven false, but the proof doesn't fit in the comment box. Is there a best practice for pointing this out? (I'm explicitly not asking about differences ...
Sycorax's user avatar
  • 90.7k
3 votes
0 answers
71 views

what is an answer versus a comment to a self-study question

We don't just post answers to self-study questions where we give the proof of whatever the OP is asking. I think this is a good policy. However, that seems to mean that any post in response to a self-...
Dave's user avatar
  • 61.6k
7 votes
2 answers
79 views

A mod removed my answer (referencing the answer from comments) to my question saying it doesn't answer it

I have a question about my Cross Validated post: Statistics: what kind of test to use to test this hypothesis? A member commented on my question in detail, and that comment did answer my question. I ...
curiousMinded's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
291 views

If someone answered my question outside CV, can I post the answer myself and accept?

I asked a question on CV and linked it to an author of a paper. They are not on CV, but gave me an answer. Is it OK to post it as an answer, as long as I say who it is from and that it isn't my own ...
Mark White's user avatar
  • 10.3k
12 votes
1 answer
148 views

How to answer questions about backpropagating specific architectures or functions?

There are quite a few questions asking how to run backpropagation when dealing with skip connections, residual networks, "mixed" RNN-CNNs, attention mechanisms, etc. I suspect the reason for the ...
shimao's user avatar
  • 26k
11 votes
3 answers
241 views

If OP asks for a software referral, and a referral *doesn't* exist, may we answer with the code they asked for?

If an OP asks for a R library recommendation (policy under debate in another meta thread, I realize), and no acceptable recommendation exists, what is the policy regarding writing and posting code ...
Peter Leopold's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
218 views

Do we have an authoritative answer on why validation accuracy can oscillate or even increase, when validation loss keeps increasing?

I know that accuracy is an improper scoring rule, thus it shouldn't be used to choose among classifiers. In particular, it should not be used to choose the best hyperparameters for a NN. However, ...
DeltaIV's user avatar
  • 17.8k
11 votes
2 answers
284 views

Mentioning commercial/freemium product that I developed in my answers

I am an expert on the topic and answered a set of questions. I am wondering if it is OK to mention the solver that I develop given that it is commercial but has freemium plans. All my answers are ...
IndieSolver's user avatar
22 votes
5 answers
630 views

Is a quick-and-dirty answer better than no answer?

I find that many questions go unanswered for lack of a great answer. That applies to both CV and here on CV meta. Whether this is due to brain drain, or a flood new users, or perfectionism, is hard to ...
shadowtalker's user avatar
  • 12.5k
3 votes
0 answers
72 views

3 upvotes (on answer) yielded only 10 reputation. Why not 30? [duplicate]

Yesterday, I posted this answer: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/350970/117812 which yielded 3 upvotes, no downvote. My "latest achievements" (goblet icon) says that I have achieved 10 reputation ...
Bernhard's user avatar
  • 8,417
15 votes
2 answers
253 views

What should we do with outdated answers?

We have highly popular question, on extremely popular topic that has an outdated answers (most from 2010, newest ones from 2015): How to choose the number of hidden layers and nodes in a feedforward ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 138k
5 votes
1 answer
297 views

How to deal with this interesting but convoluted question

In this question we encounter two problems: Differing p-values car::Anova, anova & post hoc in logistic regression One problem is about differences between the single p-value for an anova test ...
Sextus Empiricus's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
87 views

What to do if your accepted answer is wrong and you believe you know the right answer?

There is a question that I answered. That answer was accepted, and got a decent amount of points. It is also the only answer to that question. I later realized that my answer is wrong. But I now have ...
Bridgeburners's user avatar
24 votes
1 answer
336 views

Do answers with equations and formulas in them get more votes?

I have this hypothesis. Ceteris paribus the answers that have formulas (equations) in them get more votes than plain English answers. Do you agree?
Aksakal's user avatar
  • 61.2k
5 votes
1 answer
120 views

What to do when existing answers to your question (with a bounty) are wrong or very incomplete?

I've recently asked this question, and I have two answers. One is very incomplete, lacking the most important cases. The other one I think is completely incorrect, although 'apparently intuitive'. ...
An old man in the sea.'s user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
251 views

What happens when the answer is beyond the asker's experience?

Roughly, there are many ways to "answer" a statistical question: with actual mathematics, with "proofs by pictures" or "proofs by simulation", and with casual explanation. Is it ever the case that ...
AdamO's user avatar
  • 62.3k
12 votes
1 answer
101 views

Is it OK to use suggestions by other people to answer a question with a bounty?

I wrote this answer and wanted to make sure that I am not violating this community's etiquette. My answer builds on two suggestions made by other users in the comments on the question. Those other ...
Candamir's user avatar
  • 1,030
5 votes
1 answer
134 views

What to do about an answer copied verbatim by another user (in an attempt to be helpful)?

I just noticed that this answer is a nearly verbatim copy of my answer to the duplicate question here (I answered before I marked the question as a dupe: I'm not sure what happened, but I might have ...
Ben Bolker's user avatar
  • 43.4k
5 votes
1 answer
57 views

What happens to reputation if an upvoted answer is moved to another SE site?

As per object: if a question which received some upvotes is moved to another SE site, what happens to the OP reputation? Does her/his reputation on CV decreases, and the reputation on the other site ...
DeltaIV's user avatar
  • 17.8k
-3 votes
1 answer
192 views

'Cultural differences' between statsSE and mathSE

Notwithstanding that both statsSE and mathSE are both stackexchange sites, and share a similar subject matter, often attended by the same or similar groups of people, I have noticed what I would ...
wolfies's user avatar
  • 7,643
15 votes
1 answer
229 views

Should I upvote an elaborated answer which I do not fully understand?

If I saw a lot of effort in an answer (e.g., assume that there are a lot of derivations, code, and plots), but I'm not sure that the math is correct, should I upvote to encourage the person answering ...
Haitao Du's user avatar
  • 36.7k
7 votes
2 answers
201 views

Should I answer a question that seems off-topic here?

I have what I feel is a very good answer for question Summary of manyglm model objects running too slowly in R; can I speed them up?. However, this does look like a question for Stack Overflow, more ...
DeltaIV's user avatar
  • 17.8k
14 votes
1 answer
237 views

If a complete answer is short, should it be a comment?

Kjetil and I have had a disagreement about whether my answer here should be a comment. OP's question is essentially one of reading/finding documentation for how xgboost works.* The full and ...
Sycorax's user avatar
  • 90.7k
15 votes
0 answers
869 views

How to encourage people to upvote new answers to old questions?

I have the impression that many new answers to old questions often do not get the number of upvotes they deserve. What can we do so that these answers are also upvoted? "Old question" in this ...
Ferdi's user avatar
  • 5,179
2 votes
2 answers
432 views

Why are short answers considered to be poor quality for this site?

I have written some answers that are short, concise and accurate. But I get a message that indicates that my answer is of poor quality. I would appreciate hearing some thoughts on this.
Michael R. Chernick's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
134 views

I asked 2 questions in 1 post, now I have 2 answers, each one answers another question, which one to accept?

In 1 post I asked 2 questions. I asked them together, since they occurred together for me, even though in hindsight I could've asked them separately. However, now I have an answer that answers my ...
Ytsen de Boer's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
574 views

Why do people downvote old questions and answers?

This applies to many of us who have been members of this site for many years. Some of my old questions and answers get reviewed periodically. This is fine. Members have a right to upvote or ...
Michael R. Chernick's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
110 views

Should I answer this question or should I add an answer to these other "similar" questions?

I was going to answer a question about books for time series. However, in comments Andre Silva pointed out this answer (which is also a Community Wiki) and this other answer. Now, the latest ...
DeltaIV's user avatar
  • 17.8k
15 votes
1 answer
182 views

Answering off-topic questions. Appropriate?

Sometimes I see off topic questions which have a very simple answer. Here's an example: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/254623/confidence-interval-for-anova-in-spss. It's clearly off topic, ...
Jeremy Miles's user avatar
  • 17.7k
11 votes
1 answer
316 views

Include someone's comment to your answer, in your answer

If you provide an answer, and someone comments on it with another piece of evidence in favor of your answer, but different, is it appropriate to include that comment in your answer and recognize the ...
ilanman's user avatar
  • 4,787
5 votes
1 answer
68 views

Why is the community moving CV questions to the homepage today?

Officially the Community is saying that this is being done to reevaluate for questions they recently activated (reactivated) the answers as to which are good or bad. But how are new comments, upvotes ...
Michael R. Chernick's user avatar
15 votes
2 answers
259 views

Should new users be allowed to provide questions similar to others?

Recently on CrossValidated I have found that new members may not have studied all the rules prior to asking their first question. I find that moderators and other users will quickly vote to close ...
Michael R. Chernick's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
70 views

When to post a separate answer even when answered in comments [duplicate]

There are times when the answer is provided in the comments. Either implicitly, or sometimes, after several back and forth, it becomes explicit. When it becomes obvious that the OP's question is ...
ilanman's user avatar
  • 4,787
22 votes
1 answer
174 views

Is partial duplication of answers acceptable?

Since this site frequently deals with larger statistical concepts, I frequently find that my explanations to users cover a lot of the same ground. For example, when I am answering a question on cross-...
Barker's user avatar
  • 1,182
15 votes
2 answers
307 views

Do a few users answer lots of questions?

Consider the reputation graphs of stats.stackexchange in a log-log scale: This seems to mean that very few users answer most of the questions, at least compared to stackoverflow: See this ...
llrs's user avatar
  • 585
1 vote
1 answer
105 views

When an answer is marked as "accepted" and later reversed, how and why can it happen?

If a response (answer) is flagged as answering an OPs question ("accepted") and that decision is subsequently reversed, how does this happen? Who has the authority to reverse an answer? What are the ...
Mike Hunter's user avatar
  • 10.6k
10 votes
1 answer
127 views

Should the comments be used to guide someone to the answer?

Currently I am trying to guide a user get to the answer of her/his question by asking successive questions. I believe this technique in general can be a good way to help someone learn, as opposed to ...
dimpol's user avatar
  • 1,032
3 votes
1 answer
31 views

Answers appear sorted by date and not by the vote count

When I read the question How to correct outliers once detected for time series data forecasting? the answers are in an unexpected order, based on how the answers appear in StackOverflow. ...
user avatar
-2 votes
1 answer
45 views

Why can't I put a tag on my answer that is different than the tag in the question? [duplicate]

What is the way to add a tag in an answer, possibly regarding a tool, approach, or such, but something the original asker did not envision, without editing the asked question? I'm presuming the ...
EngrStudent's user avatar
  • 9,305
7 votes
1 answer
299 views

An answer posted 30 seconds after the question was closed; how is it possible?

This question -- SVD for PCA: Why would one standardize the data matrix? -- was closed as a duplicate at 16:59:24 (nine minutes after having been posted). I can swear I saw it closed and without ...
amoeba's user avatar
  • 104k
9 votes
2 answers
214 views

Multiple answers to same question?

Is it acceptable for a single user to post more than one answer for the same question? Or should all answers be consolidated to a single post? For example, in this question I had posted an initial ...
GeoMatt22's user avatar
  • 12.9k
6 votes
1 answer
178 views

A question is a clear duplicate, but the original question doesn't have an answer - only a (real good) comment. What to do?

Question Compare the statistical significance of the difference between two polynomial regressions in R is an obvious duplicate of question Comparing difference between two polynomial regression ...
DeltaIV's user avatar
  • 17.8k
9 votes
1 answer
132 views

User edits question after it was answered - how to react?

I guess such question may have been asked before, but I was not able to find it using search field on meta. What should we do if a user edited his/her question after it was answered? Edit your ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 138k
16 votes
3 answers
276 views

What to do when a question has an answer on Wikipedia?

Question https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/222702/58675 shows a classical errors-in-variables model (and in particular, since the calibration curve looks polynomial, total least square may suffice). ...
DeltaIV's user avatar
  • 17.8k