She was like omg, and I was like no way

This article is originally published at https://robertgrantstats.wordpress.com

Why are there zombie stats (they’re not true, and nobody really believes them anyway, yet they refuse to die)? I think they fulfil a cultural need, e.g. “we only use 10% of our brains” allows us to assert that we can all become smarter in various ways if we try. If you stop and think about it for even a couple of seconds, you can see that it doesn’t make sense (what’s a % of a brain? what does “use” mean? how could anyone possibly measure this?) You don’t need the pseudo-stat but it’s kind of fun; sometimes you’ll hear people saying this with different numbers.

Now, if we can supply a better meme that fulfils the same cultural need, we can get rid of them. The counter-example that I like here is “your brain is like a muscle”. Simile is important, because everyone knows it doesn’t imply equivalence, and that the similarity doesn’t apply to every aspect of the two things. In other words, it can’t be taken literally.

I think we guardians of numbers should try to make and release more zombie-killing similes like that.

As a footnote, the use of pseudo-stats as a literary device is interesting. In the business world, it’s understood that you just inject %s into conversations and writing and they reflect your personal belief. An interviewee might say “it’s 80/20 whether we’re in recession next year,” and everybody knows it’s not based on data. But the general public, I suppose (no offense), don’t get that, and so it gradually devalues real stats. This in turn leads me to my ongoing concern that we don’t promote our profession (statisticians) enough as a reputable source. If you want your company accounts done properly, you know there are chartered accountants out there.  You may not know what it is about them that makes them chartered, but you get the impression that if you want to take business seeriously, you’d better get one. We should be doing the same for stats.

Thanks for visiting r-craft.org
This article is originally published at https://robertgrantstats.wordpress.com
Please visit source website for post related comments.