Nature’s Payback
This poem is inspired by the novel The Secret Under My Skin by Janet McNaughton and uses the novel Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.
http://www.truthpizza.org/logic/stats.htm
I think the role statistics have in our society is to inform people on the subject a given topic, and possibly influence people to change their opinions on the given topic.
I learned more about the importance of statistics in our society such as general information for safety and everyday life. For example, the percentage of people who survive car crashes when wearing seat belts to the percentage who survive that don’t.
The problems with statistics are that they can be merely made up, there can be bad sampling, unfair poll questions, and misleading statistics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_Scotia_Sunday_shopping_referendum,_2004
When I first read the article, I thought it was merely highlighting the point that a referendum on Sunday shopping in Nova Scotia resulted in the majority voting for “no”.
After learning the influencing factors, I now think there was some bias preferencing the “no” vote as the second question was, “If there is to be Sunday shopping, should it be on every Sunday or on only the six Sundays before Christmas?” This shows bias because they’re highlighting the idea of limiting Sunday shopping.
In the future, when reading and interpreting survey data I will more thoroughly analyse the influencing factors such as bias, ethics, and cost.