Classes have begun. This is what I learned so far in statistics.
"there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics"
Disraeli
"the only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself"
Winston Churchill
Mom, I thought you would appreciate that! I am glad that you enlightened us as to the many ways that statistics are worded incorrectly or misused to be interpreted inaccurately. It is amazing how many people are taken in by that (myself included more times than I know, I am sure...) And to be fair, the quotes didn't come directly from class. We had to do a websearch on class topics and write a short paragraph about the site in order to practice using Penn State's course management system. This is the website:
Besides the quotes, I also liked the interactive examples and
As a disclaimer I didn't read all of this site and have no idea as to the complete accuracy.
3 comments:
OK, what's going on? Both the links I tried to click on (here at work) were forbidden b/c they are Computer Game sites. Did you say these were Penn State sites? j/k! Well, it's time for me to send you the book How to Lie with Statistics, I guess. Anyway, it'll be fun to see what they teach you. Good luck this semester!
You're right: #2 catches most people much of the time, in my experience.
And the extrapolation vs. interpolation argument depends greatly on what the other data look like. A small extrapolation of a bunch of well-behaved data can be better than interpolating data that is an oddly varying function with maxima and minima. Of course, not too many people care about such things..
Very Interesting, Since I deal in an exact science, I often forget about the different ways one can interpolate.. Thanks for the reminder.
NaNa
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