{"id":6626,"date":"2021-03-15T10:38:57","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/?p=6626"},"modified":"2021-03-15T10:41:51","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:41:51","slug":"blog-4-numbers-game-and-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/2021\/03\/15\/blog-4-numbers-game-and-statistics\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog 4: Numbers game and Statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/files\/2021\/03\/cheese.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-6630\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/files\/2021\/03\/cheese-300x105.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"105\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/files\/2021\/03\/cheese-300x105.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/files\/2021\/03\/cheese-624x217.png 624w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/files\/2021\/03\/cheese.png 660w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tylervigen.com\/view_correlation?id=7\">http:\/\/www.tylervigen.com\/view_correlation?id=7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As I was listening to this podcast and reading the article, I couldn\u2019t help but think about this chart that I saw in my Quantitative social science class last week. We were discussing the difference between causation and correlation, and like the podcast briefly mentioned with the Nicholas Cage vs swimming pool drownings connection, one does not necessarily cause the other; it can just be a crazy coincidence. When I first saw this chart, I couldn\u2019t believe it. How could it be possible that the consumption of cheese was in any way correlated to dying by being tangled in bed sheets? I didn\u2019t even know that people died that way, let alone hundreds of people and enough people to collect data on it. Then, my teacher explained that these two sets of data in fact have nothing to do with each other, and neither caused the other to happen, there are just two sets of statistics that happen to have an almost identical progression. Therefore, this chart is extremely mis-leading. For someone who hasn\u2019t been educated on the proper ways to read and analyze information, whether its numbers or writing, could be extremely mislead by this chart if they took this chart at face value. \u00a0If someone saw this on the news, they could freak out and never eat cheese again! Just like Lindsey, I am glad to be taking both critical thinking and quantitative social science at Jepson to learn how to evaluate things we see in our everyday life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.tylervigen.com\/view_correlation?id=7 As I was listening to this podcast and reading the article, I couldn\u2019t help but think about this chart that I saw in my Quantitative social science class last week. We were discussing the difference between causation and correlation, and like the podcast briefly mentioned with the Nicholas Cage vs swimming pool drownings connection, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5095,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6626","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\/6626","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\/5095"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6626"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6631,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626\/revisions\/6631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}