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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

#51

Post by bawis »

bruce511 wrote: post #41
gloryjulio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One can get paid the big bucks without a clue what they do, even some of the most brilliant statisticians do acknowledge the ambiguity of stats.

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

#52

Post by bbeonx »

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 mean, the headline statistic can be misleading, but you gotta dig in and wrestle with the details. just like anything, we cannot boil down complex things to single numbers and expect any sort of meaningful signal. we gotta roll up our sleeves, look at definitions, think about what our actual questions are, how we might answer those questions through measurements and observations, and what the confounders are. i think a common issue folks have with stats is that they expect a tidy answer, and it just doesn't do that: it's more of a way to prove the world...the results still need some interpretation.

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

#54

Post by selcuka »

red75prime wrote: post #46
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?

> When told to a statistically illiterate person?

Which is a rounding error from 100% according to the GP.

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

#55

Post by throw310822 »

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…

>> found that 62% of respondents reported no or limited statistical knowledge

Combined with Dunning-Kruger, this means that the real number of people completely clueless about statistics is closer to 38%.

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

#56

Post by pmontra »

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…

> mean versus medians, confidence levels or margins of error

It's basic when you are attending an undergraduate course but most people can understand mean (as a dictionary might generically define it) and have a general feeling for margin of error (again, not in the mathematical way.)

Statistics has been the most difficult course in my CS course. For some reason when I start counting events to get a probability I find several perfectly plausible ways to count them, get five different probabilities and none of them is the correct answer.

And about being "trivial to manipulate [numbers] to generate the headline you want" a politician once told me that you can show the same numbers in any way you want, as in to demonstrate a thesis or its opposite.

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

#57

Post by dcminter »

salviati wrote: post #26
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…

> 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…

Well, if we're telling stats jokes...

A statistician is a man who with his head in the freezer and his feet in the oven can say "On the whole I feel perfectly normal."

Recommended reading: 'How to lie with statistics' - Huff, 1954

:)

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

#59

Post by bbeonx »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #35

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 peopl…

yeah, i've studied a lot of math and a lot of cs, and stats is tough. part of the problem is the terminology, and just giving a ton of complex machinery without telling you what it's actually doing. i've never learned that way, and it is very easy to feel like you're doing some sort of dark magic.

also, probability theory vs statistics is an important distinction: prob theory is a nice clean mathematical subject, while statistics is almost the philosophy of applying probability theory to the world.

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

#60

Post by wafflemaker »

I would be more likely to believe the results if they tested these adults and not asked them.

There's a big ego hit in admitting you don't know something. And many people are brought up thinking that it's a shame not to know something and that someone is better for knowing something. Like, a better person, not just better in some field.

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