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More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

psu.edu

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Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

#21
post #7

[flagged]

Oh we used to dream of only walking 20 miles a day.

We used to get up at 3am half an hour before we went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison then walk FOURTY miles uphill to school then when we got home our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife

Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

#23

>> found that 62% of respondents reported no or limited statistical knowledge The other 38% didn't understand the question...(my extrapolation) I did a couple semesters of statistics at uni. And I can confidently say that the number of people who can answer 3 simple questions on statistics (like say mean versus medians, confidence levels or margins of error) is, well, a rounding error from 0. Indeed, statistically, n…

You mean, the other 48% didn't understand the question. :)

Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

#25

That's like ⅐ of the US population..

“More than half” may mean anything between 50 and 100 percent. :)

But if they release headline “62% of respondents” reported no or limited statistical knowledge while only 11% regularly use statistics in daily life…

…then they would loose more than half of readers who don’t know “per cent” or % symbol (?)

I thought that OP changed the original headline but no, psu.edu really published this :)

Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

#26

>> found that 62% of respondents reported no or limited statistical knowledge The other 38% didn't understand the question...(my extrapolation) I did a couple semesters of statistics at uni. And I can confidently say that the number of people who can answer 3 simple questions on statistics (like say mean versus medians, confidence levels or margins of error) is, well, a rounding error from 0. Indeed, statistically, n…

> Assuming you don't just make them up, they're trivial to manipulate to generate the headline you want.

well encapsulated in the quote popularized by Mark Twain "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist...

One of my favourite jokes: 93 % of statistics are made up on the spot, and 61 % of people believe them. Bonus points for changing the figures every time you retell the joke.

Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

#27
What does it really mean to properly understand p-value? What I remember is that if the p-value is less than 0.05, the research result is considered statistically significant. That's about as far as my memory goes. I know that's actually a misunderstanding, but that's how most people understand it. I'm not sure how much I need to know to say I truly understand it.

Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

#28
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do either of them relate to statistical literacy in the United States?

My interpretation is how the risks (statistics) of those job functions are more known, people choose to avoid them. But the people that are-the-statistic don't necessarily agree with or understand those statistics. For example, if OP is a coal miner that hasn't had health issues yet, they may choose to discount statistics that declare x% of coal miners have negative health outcomes.

This feels correct. It's why they included the tidbit about their youth, they're saying their job was better than the life they grew with.

Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

#29

>> found that 62% of respondents reported no or limited statistical knowledge The other 38% didn't understand the question...(my extrapolation) I did a couple semesters of statistics at uni. And I can confidently say that the number of people who can answer 3 simple questions on statistics (like say mean versus medians, confidence levels or margins of error) is, well, a rounding error from 0. Indeed, statistically, n…

> Assuming you don't just make them up, they're trivial to manipulate to generate the headline you want. well encapsulated in the quote popularized by Mark Twain "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist... One of my favourite jokes: 93 % of statistics are made up on the spot, and 61 % of people believe them. Bonus points for changing the figures every ti…

You _have_ to change the numbers each time, because you're constantly measuring and these things have basic variation. It would be unrealistic if the fake statistics were the same every time!

Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

#30

>> found that 62% of respondents reported no or limited statistical knowledge The other 38% didn't understand the question...(my extrapolation) I did a couple semesters of statistics at uni. And I can confidently say that the number of people who can answer 3 simple questions on statistics (like say mean versus medians, confidence levels or margins of error) is, well, a rounding error from 0. Indeed, statistically, n…

Exactly. 38% is way too high. Are we sure about that? Statistics is not some required learning in school. Even those who learned (me for example) cannot confidently claim what it actually means. I would say most of the people don't have a clue what statistics mean
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