Ever since I took too many mathematics classes, I started using
the concept of “upper bound” literally. It confuses people.    •
Girlfriend: How long do you think it’ll take you to work out?
• Me: Oh, I don’t know. I’d say less than five hours.   •
Girlfriend: Five hours?! What are you planning to do there?   •
Me: I didn’t say it would take five hours. I said it would take
less than five hours.  Well, it did take me less than five
hours. It took me an hour and a half.   Same problem with
confidence intervals — I give these very literal answers. My
former boss told me a story about a “rationality test” she was
given, by a statistician or something. First she was asked to
guess some fact that only a 5th grader would know, like how many
tons the moon weighs or what’s the square mileage of Antarctica.
Then the statistician asked her to give 90% confidence bounds.
That’s, you’re 90% sure that the value is between these two
numbers. Most people fail by saying numbers close to their
original guess.   My boss just