Explain what role you think statistics have in our society:

I think statistics influence our every day choices, from what we’re going to wear down to what where we want to travel on vacation. There are so many articles saying “statistics have shown that” and give an explanation to why something is bad or good and we obviously take it into account when we make any decision because now it’s stuck in our head.

Explain anything new that you have learned about the importance of statistics in our society:

I learned that there are many different ways that you can be persuaded into believing exactly what society wants you to believe by using statistics. I also learned that statistics can be used in many different types of companies  and workplaces.

Describe the different types of problems with statistics:

  1. Faulty statistics: they can be simply be fabricated, statistics use specific numbers, they have a quality of authority about them, and we may be a little less suspicious that a statistical claim is false than we would be for a more descriptive argument
  2. Bad sampling: Most often, statistics are obtained by taking a sample from a larger group and assuming the whole group has the same characteristics as the sample, which doesn’t always end with the most accurate results
  3. Unfair poll questions: Polls can easily be rigged to get a desired answer by the way the questions are phrased
  4. Statistics that are true but misleading: Even when statistics are technically accurate, particular statistical facts can be very misleading
  5. Ranking statistics: Since these are based on comparisons with other quantities rather than specifying specific amounts, there are special problems we need to be aware of: not always clear what the categories are that are being ranked, does not tell us much about the actual amount involved
  6. Qualifiers on statistics: made to sound more impressive is by putting qualifications on them that might not seem important, but really are
  7. Percentages: Sometimes statistics are given in absolute terms and other times they are given in percentages. For example, “Blanko is a huge company – say it has 200,000 employees – the source might find it more impressive to say it laid off 20,000 people rather than 10% of the workforce. If Blanko is small, say 100 employees, it sounds more impressive to say they laid off 10% rather than just 10 people.”