{"id":6683,"date":"2021-03-15T17:38:44","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T21:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/?p=6683"},"modified":"2021-03-15T17:38:44","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T21:38:44","slug":"blog-post-3-15-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/2021\/03\/15\/blog-post-3-15-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post 3\/15"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found the podcast today about statistics particularly interesting because I have previously discussed similar topics in my past psychology and sociology classes. In sociology we talked about how all statistics are biased and are being used by the person who is presenting it to accomplish a particular agenda. As the podcast went over we often trust statistics because we think they are scientific and seem rational but we need to dig deeper because not only the numbers in the statistic could be wrong but the way the author chooses to present or the reader chooses to interpret the statistic could be wrong or change the meaning. Even the census which seems like a neutral source of statistics can be used to accomplish an agenda such as allocating resources. So it is really important to be critical of statistics and not accept them purely at face value.<\/span><\/p>\n

The graph I chose is similar to the example that Dr. Bezio mentioned in the podcast about how the number of people who drowned by falling into a pool correlated with films Nicolas Cage appeared in. My graph shows that per capita consumption of mozzarella cheese is highly positively correlated with civil engineering doctorates awarded. This is a spurious association because these two variables alone, mozzarella cheese consumption and civil engineering doctorates, are associated but either due to coincidence or another third factor. I chose this graph in particular because I think it is interesting that these two variables are seemingly so random and one would think that they should not show any association when in fact they show a quite strong association. The statistics presented in the graph are bad statistics and is an example of why one needs to be critical of the statistics we encounter and not accept them at face value.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found the podcast today about statistics particularly interesting because I have previously discussed similar topics in my past psychology and sociology classes. In sociology we talked about how all statistics are biased and are being used by the person who is presenting it to accomplish a particular agenda. As the podcast went over we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6683","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\/6683","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\/5102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6685,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6683\/revisions\/6685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}