The fallacy here is thinking that all you have to do is *teach it*

Less than 10 percent of the population on average has the math skills and aptitude to learn statistics and probability, and at least half of those individuals won’t apply it correctly when their emotional biases take over.

Add it the very real problem of cherry picked data, and it is no wonder a large percentage of the population relies on innumerate journalists to tell them what they ought to think, and what they ought be be afraid of.

People dont develop their biases and opinions logically. And you arent going to defeat them in the classroom.

For a good primer, read John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy. (It isnt perfect. As I recall, He falls into at least one of his own logic traps right there in black and white)

...having statistical literacy being prioritized like reading and math and taught in schools from early on.

And whence are you going to get these statistically-literate teachers?

I had to take a Statistics course in a junior college once. I was in the class after already taking several college-level statistics classes and was only in attendance to remedy some paperwork issues; my other choice to complete the requirement was a basic math class and, after college-level calculus, that was not going to fly. The teacher (I refuse to call a community college instructor "professor") acknowledged that he had neither the time not the academically-inclined student body to teach statistics in detail.

So, he taught skepticism to the students. He gave them (us?) the basics of statistics and then covered questions to ask when someone starts spouting statistics to prove a point - i.e., if 4 out of 5 dentists recommend sugarless gum, how many dentists were queried.

He barely covered concepts like standard deviations and was basically teaching chimps to count. I hate to be so hard on my fellow "students" but when you have to explain average more than once after high school, you're not dealing with people who use a majority of their brain power for academics.

While his approach was simplistic and remedial, it did have one benefit applicable here. It made the students aware of various statistical concepts and taught them to be skeptical of fast-flung statistics used by politicians and con artists (or do I repeat myself?).

Women's hourly pay rates are 52% lower than men's at Easyjet. On average, women earn 15% less per hour at Ladbrokes and 33% less at Virgin Money.

Why are these being divided along men-women lines. It's comparing different jobs. Flight Attendants make less than pilots and mechanics - no matter the gender. Unless the Flight Attendants can flap their arms to keep the plane in the air, they're less integral to actually getting the plane to its destination than pilots and mechanics are.

You want to make more? Go to school and study to become a mechanic or pilot. It goes back to our Harry Potter discussion the other day. There's this suspicion in modern feminism that higher-level skills are innate and require no training or struggle to acquire; that any difficulty in learning math or science is merely an artificial roadblock thrown up to keep women out. And, therefore, it's discriminatory to pay more for those higher-level skills or to hold them in higher esteem.

I would say most people are innumerate. You can't teach statistics to them until you've taught them enough to be numerate. And in the USofA it is alleged that they've been taught to be numerate.

We're down to this:

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Torture the data until it gives us the results we want, then write the paper and submit it for peer review.

Why are these being divided along men-women lines. It's comparing different jobs.

You don't get the desired result that way. Torture the data.

And it's also easier to simply count all the money in the two columns, and then divide by each N to get an average amount.

That's how you get the 75 cents on the dollar nonsense. There's no control for what job, hours worked, number of jobs worked and so on. Once you start controlling for those variables, the gap starts decreasing. Which is not the desired result, and also involves actual work.

Worse, when you start looking at recent graduates in STEM fields, in many cases you'll find women making a bit more than their male counterparts. It isn't a lot and may not be significant in the long run. But they have something the employers want, and that makes them more valuable.

My neighbor got a new job with a big raise but farther commute--I barely see him now. Because that is what men must do to support their families. His wife is a teacher, an ideal job for a woman to be home with her kids when they are on breaks, but paying less.
When I was in Germany, I saw men in their prime sweeping the streets with a push broom--clearly make work--but that is what the logic of everyone getting paid equally leads to. I want my surgeon to be making lots of money so it attracts the bets talent. If the airplane mechanics and pilots don't do a perfect job, people die and millions of $ are lost. If flight attendants do a crappy job....meh. This idea that it is unfair that some people make more money is simply childish. Most people do not prefer to put the years of arduous training necessary to become a pilot or engineer, so whose fault is that? The idea that the difficulty of the training is artificial is absurd and requires the kind of conspiracy found in Dan Brown's books to pull off.
I'd also note that many journalists went into journalism because they couldn't handle math and weren't creative enough to be English majors.

Conan.
Your instructor was correct in one sense. The students weren't going on in math or STEM and the chi square test wasn't going to be an issue with them.

They were learning citizens' statistics, which is to say, how to avoid being fooled.

They were learning citizens' statistics, which is to say, how to avoid being fooled. ~ Richard Aubrey at January 7, 2018 1:24 PM

Yes, and that's all he promised them. Which is part of what makes me think his lesson plan would be of a level applicable to a general high school curriculum.

Anyone going into a field that required higher statistics can study at that higher level, as I did.

So, I'm a statistician.

I have a different (first) qualm with the "more people die in..." comment. I will illustrate:

Suppose you have two high schools: X and Y. If school X has 100 seniors get into their first-choice college and school Y has 20 get in... which is better for getting into your first-choice?

You don't know without knowing how many kids are in the school. If school X has 700 seniors (100/700 get their top-choice) and school Y has 20 (so 20/20 get the first-choice)... then I'd rather go to school Y.

Counts are meaningless... because if nobody commutes by pogo-stick, there are no commuter pogo-deaths, which means (by erroneous count-logic) it is safest... and that clearly has nothing to do with whether they are safe or not.

I'd like to know, for instance, out of bicyclist hours (on roads, not trails and whatnot) or bicyclist miles, how the injuries (not just deaths) compare with auto-hours or miles. Even comparing commute counts would be better (although I'd guess bicyclists generally have shorter commutes and better weather conditions too).

Before prioritizing the study of statistics I would prefer that students be taught methods of reasoning with an emphasis on identifying logical fallacies.

"Less than 10 percent of the population on average has the math skills and aptitude to learn statistics and probability, and at least half of those individuals won’t apply it correctly when their emotional biases take over."

How many of these classes appeal to the student, other than as a means to get a math skill?
There are hundreds of situations in daily life to which stats can be applied - even if they are abbreviated, such as a baseball player's hitting percentage.
It's difficult to leap right into the "proper" mathematical bases of statistics if you don't have a goal.
As it is, you see the misuse of common words all the time, as the public doesn't care about precision in speech. They just want to feel good. They don't care that "always", "never" and "unique" have absolute values, or that measurements always include uncertainty factors. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. Even movies must have an ending.
So I suggest that any discussion of stats should express a clear goal to the student. First, during and after!

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"It goes back to our Harry Potter discussion the other day. There's this suspicion in modern feminism that higher-level skills are innate and require no training or struggle to acquire..."

Nobody bothered to mention earlier that being a wizard is a hereditary trait. It's central to most of the machinations.

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Why has no one mentioned Ask The Pilot?

Shannon, your question intrigued me, so I spent a few minutes with Bing. The big problem, as it turns out, is that nobody has a good handle on how many miles cyclists, as a group, ride per year. I came up with this:

https://bicycleuniverse.info/bicycle-safety-almanac/

which has some guesstimates, which are rather old now. Upshot: The author estimates bicycle fatalities at about 1.00 per million miles traveled. There are, however, huge error bars on that number. By comparison, automobile fatalities in the U.S. have been running around 0.11 per million vehicle miles traveled, since 2010. The author of the article protests that, in his estimate, most of the fatalities in cycling result from dangerous riding, e.g. riding against traffic. That may be true, but it can also be argued that a large percentage of automobile fatalities result from dangerous driving.

Airlines track safety in "passenger miles", which takes into account both the distance traveled and the number of people aboard; in other words, a 100-mile flight with 50 pax constitutes 5000 passenger miles. We just completed what is widely being regarded as the safest year in commercial aviation history. There were 59 onboard fatalities (pax and crew) worldwide, plus 35 on-ground (all of which were the result of one crash, a Turkish Airlines 747 which crashed off the end of a runway in Kyrgyzstan). I haven't seen a summary of passenger miles flown last year, but doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I'm getting about 0.0001 fatalities per passenger mile.

(And at this point, I'll repeat something I've said before: The one single thing you can do to reduce your risk in flying? Don't fly on Third World airlines.)

"Before prioritizing the study of statistics I would prefer that students be taught methods of reasoning with an emphasis on identifying logical fallacies."

Wow!

A statement I agree with, in a new record for brevity from Artemis, and thus a new high in content/syllable!

Thank you, thank you thank you!

I would have thought riding against traffic would be safer as the cyclist could see whats comming

Higher statistical literacy wouldn't help. People who put stuff like this out where they intentionally mix pilots and cabin crew are doing so on purpose. The intent is not to inform but to mislead and 'tell a narrative'. And the people who 'fall for this' aren't stupid. They chose to fall for it.

The issue isn't ignorance or idiocy it is dishonesty. Openly stating you are a female supremacist isn't popular or effective. So the whole group puts forward a more socially acceptable reason.

Same with the bicyclesupremacists you are wrestling with. They toss out some deliberately misleading statistics which they use as a justification to do what they already wanted to do. Which is why they get so angry when you point out the lie. They know they are lying. But if you take away the lie then they are even less likely of getting what they want.

"I haven't seen a summary of passenger miles flown last year, but doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I'm getting about 0.0001 fatalities per passenger mile."

Don't you mean "per million passenger miles"?

“Before prioritizing the study of statistics I would prefer that students be taught methods of reasoning with an emphasis on identifying logical fallacies.”

Heck, I would be happy if ten percent of high school seniors could correctly apply the scientific method to any simple scientific question. Or even understood the very real difference between an experiment and a demonstration.

Heck I'd feel happier if teachers actually knew what the word 'opinion' means.

"Don't you mean "per million passenger miles"?"

Yes, sorry about that.

"Heck, I would be happy if ten percent of high school seniors could correctly apply the scientific method to any simple scientific question. Or even understood the very real difference between an experiment and a demonstration."

Heck, I would be happy if lawyers and politicians stopped pretending to be scientists and left the critique of the understanding of the scientific method to the professionals.

It is especially annoying when people sitting in their living room having never written a scientific publication in their life start spouting off about the ins and outs of the peer review process.

It would be as arrogant as a physics professor talking about what it is like to present an argument at trial or negotiate a corporate contract.

Heck, I would be happy if lawyers and politicians stopped pretending to be scientists and left the critique of the understanding of the scientific method to the professionals.

It is especially annoying when people sitting in their living room having never written a scientific publication in their life start spouting off about the ins and outs of the peer review process.

It would be as arrogant as a physics professor talking about what it is like to present an argument at trial or negotiate a corporate contract.

Artemis at January 10, 2018 1:38 PM

There is no secret to the scientific method Artemis. It can be applied by anyone willing to gather the data and set aside their emotional biases.

Lawyers who deal with patent law are often science and engineering majors in college.
Medical mal practice lawyers are often med school graduates.

You don't know my educational background Artemis. So don't assume just because I have a law degree that I have never taken calculus, organic chemistry, physics, biology or genetics.

Lots of very well educated people on this board, and your arguments from authority fall flat.

The fact that you have failed to recognize this for at least the last three years says a lot about the simplistic rigidity and pedantic nature of your thought process and education.

A completely irrelevant point, but bikes are safer than cars, although not for the reason given.

It's like in the joke: A man in a field with a bull asks the farmer if the bull is safe. The farmer replies, "He's safe. Can't say the same about you, though."

The farmer is misusing "safe" the same way people who favour motorists do.

Isab Says:

"You don't know my educational background Artemis. So don't assume just because I have a law degree that I have never taken calculus, organic chemistry, physics, biology or genetics."

I don't recall citing you by name Isab. I made a very general comment that you have decided to take personally.

For someone who insists that you are skilled at avoiding emotional bias you aren't demonstrating mastery of that ability.

Also... taking calculus or organic chemistry, or physics does not make one a scientists anymore than taking a civics course makes someone a lawyer or taking an anatomy course makes someone a surgeon.

Scientists are professionals who practice using the scientific method and data based analysis every day. It isn't a hobby that you nail down as an elective.