After having read 3 sentences, I already find myself disagreeing with this analysis. “X out of 4” is nowhere near as common as “X out of 5“, since humans like nice round numbers, and culturally we consider 5 to be a round number- so even if #5 was not one of the “3 out of 5” who wore the shoes, “3 out of 5” is still the appropriate phrasing to use.
Similarly, “2 out of 3” isn’t as compelling, because it doesn’t tell us that a large number of talented athletes are wearing the shoes, to the same extent as “3 out of 5″
So this analysis is attempting to extract far more information than is actually justified
If Reebok wanted to report a valid statistic they would report something like 11% of the top 100 wears our shoos, I think a much smaller number than top 100 was picked exactly because that was where the effect was the most exaggerated. ChristianKl share your intuition that 3⁄5 sounds more impressive than 2⁄3. I also agree that reporting top 4 would seem even more fishy, though it could be spun as 75% of quarter finalists in knockout tournament sports.
After having read 3 sentences, I already find myself disagreeing with this analysis. “X out of 4” is nowhere near as common as “X out of 5“, since humans like nice round numbers, and culturally we consider 5 to be a round number- so even if #5 was not one of the “3 out of 5” who wore the shoes, “3 out of 5” is still the appropriate phrasing to use.
Similarly, “2 out of 3” isn’t as compelling, because it doesn’t tell us that a large number of talented athletes are wearing the shoes, to the same extent as “3 out of 5″
So this analysis is attempting to extract far more information than is actually justified
If Reebok wanted to report a valid statistic they would report something like 11% of the top 100 wears our shoos, I think a much smaller number than top 100 was picked exactly because that was where the effect was the most exaggerated. ChristianKl share your intuition that 3⁄5 sounds more impressive than 2⁄3. I also agree that reporting top 4 would seem even more fishy, though it could be spun as 75% of quarter finalists in knockout tournament sports.