Weirdest Maths by David Darling

Author:David Darling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Maths;Mathematics;Science;Puzzles;Problems;Facts;Prodigy;Infinity;Discovery;Solutions;Mensa;IQ;Fun;Weird;Wonderful;Paradox
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2020-10-02T12:40:39+00:00

‌Chapter 8

Stats Weird

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.

– Mark Twain

You’re more likely to die from a falling coconut than from a shark attack, and more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes and, over a lifetime, spends twenty-five years sleeping. About 11 percent of the population are left-handed. The most typical human face on Earth is that of a 28-year-old Chinese man.

These are statistics. They’re not statements that apply to anyone in particular. Take one of us (David), for instance. As I live in Britain and rarely swim in the sea, the prospect of death by falling coconut or shark bite isn’t something that keeps me awake at night. What does keep me awake are ideas for the next day’s writing: drifting away inside seven minutes is something I can only dream about. And, I’m neither Chinese nor, unfortunately, twenty-eight.

It’s easy to confuse the terms ‘statistics’, ‘data’, and ‘facts’, which leads to them being used interchangeably. It isn’t a statistic, for example, that water expands by nine percent when it freezes: it’s a fact, guaranteed by the laws of nature. On the other hand, the statement ‘your foot is the same length as your forearm’ is based on statistics and certainly doesn’t apply to everyone. That the Eiffel Tower has 1,792 steps is a fact, that the average hen lays 228 eggs a year is a statistic. Statisticians work with aggregated data and come up with conclusions from a series of observations or measurements, not individual items. These conclusions may be very useful or extremely misleading, depending on how the data were collected and analysed.

The expression ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics’ was popularised by Mark Twain and attributed by him, in his autobiography, to the nineteenth-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. But Twain’s assertion itself is untrue because Disraeli had nothing to do with it. In fact, the origin of the phrase is uncertain, although variations on it appeared in print throughout the 1880s and 1890s. The gist, of course, holds true: that the misuse of statistics, whether accidental or deliberate, can lead to all sorts of false conclusions and crazy beliefs. Sometimes errors get repeated so often that completely wrong data are taken to be facts without anyone bothering to check them.

Statistics is fertile ground for mix-ups, through oversight or intent, which skew predictions and, in the worst cases, totally misrepresent the reality of a situation. Cherry-picking data is a classic ploy of politicians or anyone else trying to bolster their opinions or pet theories and, in elections, pollsters often fall victim to a combination of errors. In the 1948 US presidential election, three major polls predicted that Thomas Dewey, governor of New York, would win against the incumbent, Harry Truman – and got it wrong. Among their mistakes, they stopped polling too soon and so failed to take into account the late energising effect that Truman tended to have on voters.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.