Interpretation of Vague Quantifiers

Aug 21, 2020 1:55 AM

I asked people on Reddit questions like: "If there were originally 10 cookies, and now there are a couple left, how many do you think are left?"

Some people were asked about cases with 10 original cookies, others with 50 cookies. Each question gave a different amount of remaining cookies: "a couple", "not many", "a few", "some" or "several".

Here are the average responses for each question, along with 95% confidence intervals.

Now as a percentage of the total number of cookies.

The distributions.

psychology

data

numbers

A couple is always 2... wth is this 2.5 shit

6 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 1

always! A couple =2. A few is 3, maybe 4.

6 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Someone tells you to "go down a couple of blocks" or to "pick up a couple of XYZ." Do they mean "exactly two" and if they do why not say so?

6 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

When saying "a couple" they should mean exactly two, because a couple is exactly two.

6 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Should and does are two different things.

6 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0