{"id":6623,"date":"2021-03-15T10:56:05","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/?p=6623"},"modified":"2021-03-15T10:56:05","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:56:05","slug":"blog-post-3-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/2021\/03\/15\/blog-post-3-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post (3\/16)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was very surprised by the content of the Huff reading, because I had always assumed that statistical information would be representative and heavily researched\/sampled. I was shocked at the realization that without context or with an unrepresentative sample, statistical information can be grossly misrepresentative of reality. I had also assumed that market research or polling questions would also be accurate, never taking into account people\u2019s tendencies or abilities to lie in order to make themselves look better or worse. When looking at numbers it is difficult to remember that the data is likely being presented with the intention of convincing the reader of something, therefore it may be biased and even if it has correlation, the information may be entirely unrelated. Although I knew that in advertising, companies would present data that is in their best interest, purposely excluding information that does not serve them, or misrepresenting products similar to the way Old Gold cigarettes did, claiming them to be better for you than any other cigarette, neglecting to mention the statistics that showed very little difference between them and other cigarettes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I think that statistical figures claiming to represent a population should be required to clarify the number of people sampled and methods of sampling, so that readers can decide whether or not to believe the information at their own will. Just because things are strongly correlated does not mean that one is the cause or result of the other, which is very confusing, but basically it means that there are confounding factors that exist outside of the two presented that affect the outcome.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I found it extremely interesting that my automatic instinct was to believe the information presented rather than question it, especially when it was specific instead of generalized, not understanding that there is no way that is accurate or representative of a given population. I realized that statistics can be applied similarly to stereotypes: they can generalize a population but be entirely inaccurate in representing an individual within that population. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: NY Times<\/p>\n

This is my favorite chart because it depicts the current vaccine administration, which is very exciting considering the pandemic took off at a similar rate a year ago this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was very surprised by the content of the Huff reading, because I had always assumed that statistical information would be representative and heavily researched\/sampled. I was shocked at the realization that without context or with an unrepresentative sample, statistical information can be grossly misrepresentative of reality. I had also assumed that market research or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6633,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623\/revisions\/6633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}