Explain what role you think statistics have in our society

I think statistics play an important role in our society because it can help us with many problems. Statistics is collecting information, analyzing it and then presenting what we found. It can help us in math class, in businesses, for polls, and many other things in our daily lives. We can use it for ratings on a movie, for example, and find the average rating to decide if the movie is good or not. In businesses, the workers can see if the product is sellable or if it needs to be adjusted. Statistics are calculations that can be used in your daily lives without yourself even noticing that you are using it.

New things learned after reading article

After reading the article, I learned that statistics isn’t just collecting random information about something but that it has to be accurate and not misleading or false. It was surprising to see many issues that can occur with statistics. Statistics give us a bigger picture to look at and a precise understanding of what is happening around the world. I also learned that the information can be misleading because the number of people who took part in it might have different favours than others and they didn’t survey all the people in this world. It shows that not all statistics can be trusted and we should be cautious to see which information or question is accurate. The statement that you make about a certain thing has to be detailed so it isn’t too general which could be misleading to a person who read it. You should also clarify which message you are trying to present to the viewers.

Different types of problems with statistics

Faulty Statistics- Statistics should be a specific number or form that precisely show the counts of something or authority

Bad Sampling- Bad sampling can be misleading because if we take responses from a group of people (100 people) and 50 people said yes, then it would be 50%. If we said 50% of the people said yes, others assume that 50% of all the people or a big amount of population said it. It would be a different percentage if we based on 10000 people then it would be a totally different result. When a major statistic is based on a small group of people there is a lot of luck, probability and response bias involved.

Unfair Poll Questions- Statistics regarding some type of voting by answering a question can be unfair because they can word the question differently which purposely leans towards an answer that the creator wants from a majority of people.

Statistics that are true but are misleading- Facts for a statistic are usually accurate and precise but some people might not know the whole background of the problem which causes them to misunderstand it.

Ranking Statistics- Ranks are based on comparisons with quantity rather than specifying specific amounts and they are not clear which category it is based on.

Qualifiers on statistics- You would want to make sure when making a statement on a statistic, that you would the corrects words and sentence to clearly show what you are trying to say.

Percentages- Using percentages instead of regular numbers can show more meaning in the statistics that it was based on. When to use percentages can also depend on the amount of the object or people it is based on. If it was based on a small amount we would use percentages to show more of an impact and large amounts, we would use the actual number to show its quantity.