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

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

#31

Post by maccard »

> How much do you understand about statistics and p-values?

I suspect that it’s far far less than 38% of people who actually understand statistics to this level. I suspect if someone on HN went around and asked their co workers to explain what a P value is in 2 sentences, it would be less than 10% of a (presumably) highly educated workforce.

I suspect about 40% of adults are unable to tell the difference between mean/median/ mode, or could answer the Monty hall problem, or even “if I flip a coin 3 times are the chances I get heads 3 times in a row”

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

#33

Post by zkmon »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #15
ethersteeds wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait... Your second paragraph is jarringly different from the first. How do they relate?

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

Statistical literacy, or any literacy for that matter, requires hard work that is seen as a normal way of life. When machines do that hard work for us, it is no longer seen as a normal thing, but some unnecessary hard work (when we have cars, why walk 20 miles? And we have machines that do statistics).

Just like how those college kids saw my work as horrifically weird hard work, while I saw it as a normal thing.

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

#34

Post by maccard »

jdw64 wrote: post #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.

Fair play to you for answering, but that’s not what a P value is! A p value is the chance of getting a result greater than the result you actually got, _assuming you are testing a hypothesis_.

I’m also pretty sure I would fall in the camp of saying “nope don’t understand P values” as I can’t remember anything else about them.

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

#35

Post by NitpickLawyer »

I'd say in reality it's way more than that. The first statistics course in uni was a very humbling experience. I realised that while I thought I understood a lot (and I was coming from a CS heavy background, olympiads and such) real statistics is way harder and a lot more counterintuitive than I thought. Granted, this talks about "basic" statistical understanding, but even that is way more complicated than most people assume.

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

#38

Post by shrubby »

bruce511 wrote: post #16

>> 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…

I started thinking about this percentage on decision makers around the world and got a chuckle.

I've been trying to talk about the median vs. mean with a bunch of politicians on themes around the zillionaires, wealth or consumption and for most parts they're clueless. Or the ones with degrees still go with the normal (mean that skews the normal) as they're afraid.

I just happened to get a copy of naked statistics yesterday, as I feel the human traits of poor comprehension of probabilities can be enhanced to at least some extent. And my degree from the social side didn't include statistics.

If there are better entry-level books on the matter I'm happy to take some recommendations.

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

#39

Post by blackbear_ »

This was abundantly clear when people, even on HN, were upset about the bureau of labor statistics revising their numbers tendentially downwards, probably confusing the notion of statistical bias for that of political bias.

If the figures are biased, just estimate the bias and correct for that, what is the big deal they said, as if the bias variance tradeoff was not a thing.

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

#40

Post by applfanboysbgon »

maccard wrote: post #31

> How much do you understand about statistics and p-values? I suspect that it’s far far less than 38% of people who actually understand statistics to this level. I suspect if someone on HN went around and asked their co workers to explain what a P value is in 2 sentences, it would be less than 10% of a (presumably) highly educated workforce. I suspect about 40% of adults are unable to tell the difference between mean…

I mean, the Monty Hall problem is a literal gotcha that trips up literal professors, that's a horrendous example to use as the baseline for "basic understanding of statistics".

Other than that choice of example, I do agree in that I doubt anywhere near 40% of adults have basic statistical literacy. I've played in card game tournaments semi-professionally and just gambler's fallacy + results-oriented thinking alone make it so easy to take other people's money, and if you can't figure out such basic concepts as "getting tails once doesn't mean I'm due for a heads next flip" even when you're literally losing money, what are the chances of anyone else caring about understanding it when they're not even being given the hands-on reward-based reinforcement learning opportunity?

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