Ratan
More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
71–80 of 227 posts
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 :)
After all the average human has one breast and one testicle.
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#73What 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.
P-values are almost always taught poorly, but it's not actually that difficult of a concept. I took statistics in high school, again in undergrad, and it wasn't until the third time in grad school that it actually made intuitive sense (thank you Julia Yang!). When you're testing a hypothesis in statistics, it's easier to formulate a "null hypothesis" which is the opposite of what you're testing, and then try to disprove that null hypothesis.
A p-value is the probability, assuming the null hypothesis is true, of obtaining a result at least as extreme as the one actually observed.
Put differently: if the null hypothesis were true, then for p=0.05 you'd see at most 5% of the time.
Put differently again: If the null hypothesis you are testing is true, then for p=0.05 random sampling would not return an observation as far from the test statistic as you just observed, 95% of the time.
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#74We already know the pre-university US education system is bad (comparatively with other OECD countries), particularly in Mathematics.
No surprise here.
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#75“Fortunately, concepts in statistics are grounded in intuition and rationality.“ Yeaaah… let’s talk about that. Seems like a fair bit of stats were designed to intimidate —so as to get people to stop asking questions. Or at least that is the effect! Stats designed for intuition are few. See Kill Math for how it might be done: https://worrydream.com/KillMath/
The article reads like work of a crackpot. There’s a reason why maths is done the way it is, and intimidating people is definitely not the motivation.
Bret Victor is awesome. I especially like his “Inventing on Principle” talk and his “Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction” article.
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :)
After all the average human has one breast and one testicle.
Amd less than 2 legs.
If even one person has 1 leg, then the average is strictly less than 2.
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#77>> 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...
And the older Anscombe's Quartet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#78Reminds me a joke by Robert Anton Wilson:
"You know how dumb an average American is. Well, mathematically speaking, half of them are even dumber than that."
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 :)
The average body temperature of the people in a hospital is in the normal range. Many do have a slight fever, but some are in the fridge.
Our stat prof was a very special guy.
Re: More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
#80>> 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…
It would be interesting to probe the political orientation of the people who understand and those who don’t and see if there is some correlation there.
My thesis is that no-one understands. So there's no political orientation.
Your suggestion suggests that a little bit of technical education would change political allegiance. Alas that is incorrect. Politics is about worldview (me and mine versus you and yours) and a world view cannot be changed by something as mundane as education.
Each person has both a self-centered side, and a community-centered side. For some it's mostly self centered. For others mostly community centered. Politics is about finding out which side the population has swung to.