제목은 Critical Thinking about Statistics로 정했습니다. 통계를 비판적인 시각으로 바라보자는 건데요. 통계란 것이 보여주는 사람 마음대로 보일 수 있기 때문에 항상 조심해야하는 자료이죠. 그래서 여러 가지 사례들을 조사해서 의견을 뒷받침했습니다.
게다가 우리 클럽의 출석률을 조사해서 통계 자료로 그래프를 첨부해서 보여줬어요. 실제 클럽 멤버들과 직접적으로 관련된 통계 자료라서 더욱 흥미롭게 보여졌습니다.
Welcome to critical thinking 101. But, don’t worry, I have no entrance exam.
Mark Twain, who is a famous American author with The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, said that there are three kinds of lies: 1) lies, 2) damned lies, and 3) statistics.
I don’t know exactly why he said like that.
But, with the development of internet, wireless communications, and big data, the era of statisics has begun.
As a practical matter, it is impossible for citizens in contemporary society to avoid statistics about social problems.
Statistics arise in all sorts of ways, and in almost every case that people promoting statistics want to persuade us.
Politicians use statistics to persuade us that they understand society's problems and that they deserve our support.
Media use statistics to make their reporting more dramatic, more convincing, and more compelling.
Researchers user statistics to document their findings and support their conclusion.
Statistics are one of the standard types of evidence used by people in our society.
No statistic is perfect. Instead, we need to find some statisics that are less imperfect than others.
These are some reasons that statistics are misused or get misused, which are dishonest intent and unintentional errors, because we are human.
To correctly interpret a graph, you must analyze the numerical information given in the graph, so as not to be misled by the shape of the graph.
This is the attendance of our club for the last 4 months. What are you thinking of with this graph? Some people may think that this is a roller-coaster club. Very unstable.
What about this graph?
It looks very inactive.
When you meet some graphs, read labels and units on the axes.
This looks more appropreate than formers.
I’d like to interpret the result as this. During semester, the attendance had been stable while it is much fluctuated during summer vacation. It may be because our club has many students and faculties. So, we can expect that during the next 3 months which is a fall semester, the attendance is gonna be stable. Does this interpretation look trustworthy? It can be, but this is from only a year sample. So, to make it more credible, we need more samples from several years.
Next example is of correlation and causality.
The most respiratory patients died in Arizona. Why? One estimation is that it is because the air in Arizona is seriously polluted.
However, the fact is, a lot of patients have come to Arizona for treatment.
Then, how should we treat statistics?
Many people are naive to statistics. They are basically accepting. They presume that statistics are generally accurate.
They tend to be innocent and trusting. They don't ask numbers or wonder how those numbers are made.
The naive not only fail to suspect that bad statistics have flaws, but they often don't recognize when statistics are pretty good.
On the opposite side of the naive, there is the cynical.
Cynical people are suspicious of statistics.
They are convinced that numbers are probably flawed and those flaws are probably intentional. They view statistics as efforts to manipulate something.
They don't trust numbers and statistics.
There is a third, far superior option. That is the critical.
Being critical does not mean being negative or cynical.
They avoid the extremes of both naive acceptance and cynical rejection of the numbers they encounter. Instead, the critical people attempt to evaluate numbers, to distinguish between good and bad statistics.
They understand that even pretty good statistics are never perfect.
To critically think about statistics, we always have to check some points.
Who created the statistic? // Why made it? // What is being claimed? // How good is the evidence?
Statistics are not magic, nor always true or always false. It is created by human beings.
We can be fooled or we can learn a great deal about what we observing.
Being critical requires more thought, but failing to adopt a critical mind-set makes us powerless to evaluate what others tell us. When we fail to think critically, the statistics we hear might just as well be magical.
