151–160 of 227 posts
Reminds 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."
Although by "average" you usually refer to the mean, not the median.
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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, whi…
Statistical reasoning isn't really motivated when it's taught, at least in the US. My schooling (I did jump around a bunch) assumed the student to have picked it up through vague balls-and-bins style problems taught in various units in various grade levels. By the time I took my statistics class in undergrad math, coming from a similar background to you, they just sort of assumed you had a head for combinatorics and…
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.
Now: the p-value is the probability of you getting a result at least this extreme assuming the null hypothesis (that there is no difference in average height between the general population of French and Swedish people).
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> 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?
Being aware of Simpsons' paradox doesn't even help. There's no way of knowing what the right level of aggregation is without a theory.
what happens when data just russian-dolls in both directions the deeper you look?
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> the quote popularized by Mark Twain "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" I’m increasingly convinced this is a thought-terminating cliche. Understanding the difference between a median, mean and mode is fundamentally empowering. Enough people, however, will stop themselves from trying to understand that by quoting such a joke.
Its more a foreshadowing of Simpson's paradox and a cluster of similarly counterintuitive effects. Statistical evidence that is technically of high quality can cause decision makers to believe the exact opposite of what is true.
High-quality statistics allow themselves to be inspected. When a statistic is being passed around unadorned, particularly with a call to action, that’s no different from an uncited fact being accepted at face value. (Most of the complexity of statistics is in sampling. Most of the errors in statistical judgment tend to come down to misunderstanding how a sample’s statistics translate to the population you actually care about.)
>> 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…
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 pr…
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I wish people had an intuitive understanding of probabilities. It seems the average person can only think in terms of "basically never happens", "fifty fifty" and "sure thing".
Fully agree. For example, I wish managers would be capable to handle the difference between a 40% and a 70% chance to meet the deadline.
>> 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 yes…
I was recently convinced by a rather compelling argument that technocracy (rule by the technically capable) often falls to a local minima where the people in power find the first scrap of evidence that supports their preconceived agenda. Wildly racist? Natural selection “proves” that all of your decisions are “technically” justified.
But more directly to your point about being effective communicators of statistics, I’ve found that it’s difficult to help someone form their own conclusion from statistical results. Most people want the conclusion fed to them, with the statistics supplied as evidence. It’s up to us (proper statisticians) to act ethically: provide analyses in good faith and challenge the poorly conceived analyses of amateurs and statisticians acting in bad faith.