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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

#41

Post by bruce511 »

gloryjulio wrote: post #30
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…

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

If you changed "most" to "all" you'd be well inside the margin or error.

There's a reason actuaries get paid the big bucks.

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

#42

Post by zkmon »

fergie wrote: post #32
zkmon wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Are you a bot? Are you sure that you are answering in the thread that you meant to?

Nope. It's a true story. And how it relates to thread is given below in another of my comments. "Things change with time" should have given you some relation. Statistics is seen by the current generation as hard work, rightly so, due to availability of easier ways of dealing with it.

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

#43

Post by ngruhn »

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.

Agree. I think it's more important to understand statistical fallacies (selection bias, regression to the mean, survivorship bias, etc). Those are extremely common trip wires but to recognize them you don't need to memorize formal definitions.

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

#45

Post by Ekaros »

maccard wrote: post #34
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.

Same. I think it involves doing some other stuff very much properly... Like formulating whole thing... And even then you might luck out if you try enough of things...

So I admit I only know that P values are somewhat useful some of the time.

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

#46

Post by red75prime »

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 did however learn enough to know that statistics can tell you absolutely anything you want them to say.

When told to a statistically illiterate person who isn't aware of Simpson's paradox and so on?

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

#47

Post by idoubtit »

The fact that 62% of Americans have little or no understanding of statistics may be related to those 40% of Americans that believe in Creationism, i.e. human (and fossils) were created by God a few thousands of years ago, and not of randomness and evolution over millions of years. I think no other industrial country has that disbelief in science. https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creati...

This problem with science is apparent in another survey: in 2009, a Pew Center publication showed that 33% of scientists in the USA believed in God (and 18% in a transient power), which is much lower than the 80% belief of the general American population at the time. Of course, this is not a proof of causality in either direction, but scientific knowledge is seemingly inversely correlated to religiosity. And the USA are still more religious than any other industrial more-or-less-democratic country.

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

#48

Post by whstl »

gib444 wrote: post #21
zkmon wrote: 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

Luxury!

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

#49

Post by andreareina »

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…

If you're not yet familiar with it, I present to you the Datasaurus Dozen: https://www.research.autodesk.com/publications/same-stats-di...

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

#50

Post by dataflow »

Even leaving aside the quantitative stuff (p-values, medians, whatever) and can't crunch the math, IMHO at least you should have seen how statistics can lead you to the exact opposite conclusion from reality, so that you at least know whether to think twice about a conclusion drawn from statistics thrown at you. Yet I was recently quite surprised to learn that even many folks in tech had never encountered Simpson's paradox before. All it takes to start explaining that is a scatterplot and a few lines, and yet it doesn't seem to be taught widely. It's rather terrifying, given that most people (myself often included) will be happy to believe "obvious" conclusions drawn from seeing one percentage greatly exceed another.
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