Hubbard2017DataAnalysisThoughts

  1. In our society, statistics play a vital role in the gathering of data and knowledge. Whether you notice or not, statistics can be found in all types of things from video games to school! For instance, if you have ever played a FIFA game, each player is individually rated out of six factors on a scale of 100. The numbers are given to each player and their skill complies with a number of goals scored, shots on net, assists made… These are statistics. Another good example is the final grade on your report card is a statistic on how well you did in that course in that year of school. Polls, sports, and even the stock market all depend on statistics in order to see how many people like blue cheese, or how many times Sydney Crosby scored this year or even how much the price of gold has gone up in the past day. This is what leads me to believe that statistics play a massive role in the calculation of characteristics of objects and groups in our society.

2. After reading the article http://www.truthpizza.org/logic/stats.htm, I realized how easy it is to manipulate statistics to say exactly what you want while still being technically true. I also learned that statistics can provide a good unbiased fact to check our opinions in certain cases. I liked the example the website gave about how effective seatbelts are. You may think that they are ineffective because you and none of your next of kin have never been in an accident but statistics show that people wearing a seatbelt have a higher survival rate in an accident. This website readjusted my views on statistics a little bit.

3. Some major problems with statistics are the ease in which they can be manipulated, the nearly infinite variations of statistics that can be called forward whenever, and where the information is coming from. To begin with the first problem, you can either say that of a workforce of 10,000, 1000 were laid off, or 10% were laid off. Just like the website said, people, will either go for most or least impactful version of the truth in order to support their idea or point of view. The second problem being the variations of statistics is the ease of which you can make up a statistic that is still technically true. I could say that I am the fastest Japanese-Fijian boy at Riverside which is probably true because being Japanese-Fijian is fairly rare. This does not mean that I am the fastest kid a Riverside, but the fastest of my specific subdivision. Sports broadcasters are infamous for making up technically true statistics on the fly just to inflate a situation. Finally with the problem of where the information is coming from, if you do a poll on how many people eat McDonald’s and you choose a group of people a block away from McDonald’s, chances are you will have a higher percentage of people from that group who go to McDonald’s. This will not be an accurate representation of the population because not everyone lives near to a McDonald’s. This goes for any poll. The smaller the number of people you poll and the area you poll in, the worse the accuracy of the poll.

 

Overall, I still believe that statistics are an extremely important part of our society, but that they must be checked on their source, facts, and representation.

 

 

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