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4908
From: mr bopp, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
URL: http://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/Content?oid=2555940
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OK, quick (and ancient) puzzle to get us going, so please cover up the next paragraph before you answer. Alice and Bob take turns throwing seven dice. Alice will win as soon as every die lands the same; Bob will win the first time every die lands differently. Who wins? Alice, right? Since only six numbers are available, Bob will never get his seven different numbers. Unless you're a statistician, who would say, "Given an infinite number of rolls, Alice will eventually win. But since she's limited to a finite number of rolls in this life, she may never get her winning combo. So either Alice wins or it's a draw." Such is the nitpicky stuff of statistics that so peeved British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli that he exclaimed (according to Mark Twain), "There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." Disraeli might have appreciated the following tale which (spoiler!) pits a strict statistical interpretation versus common sense. Some years ago, Newsweek reported on this SAT question: "How many buses does it take to transport 1,128 soldiers if each bus holds 36 of them?" Only 70 percent of high school students realized that the solution involved dividing 1,128 by 36 (yielding 31 1/3). It got worse. Most of the 70 percent gave that fractional figure as their answer, as if a "one-third-bus" was an everyday sight in their town. The correct answer is, of course, 32 buses, one of which isn't full. A third example from the world of statistics might help if you're into to wasting your hard-earned money on lottery tickets. Let's compare the lottery with casino gambling, in which the house advantage is anything from 1 percent (as in blackjack, if you follow a basic strategy) to 5.36 percent (as in roulette). Put another way, on average, your $100 bet returns $99 or $94.64, respectively. The equivalent "edge" in lotteries is around 50 percent. That is to say, your $100 returns an average of $50. (By the way, the odds of winning the Mega Millions biweekly jackpot is about 1 in 260 million, which also happens to be your annual risk of getting killed by a falling coconut.) So if you can't resist that gambling urge, head to Blue Lake, Loleta or Trinidad. Finally, statistics can give us a more realistic way of looking at life expectancy than we're used to. Long ago, folks used to die much younger than they do now, right? Well, sort of. "Average life expectancy" depends critically on when you start counting. During the late Stone Age (50,000 to 10,000 years ago), life expectancy at birth was about 33 years. However, infant mortality and childhood diseases were rife back then, so if you survived to age 15, you could expect to die at around 55, which isn't too different from the present global average of 66. There's so much more to the slipperiness of statistics: interest rates, misleading advertising, elections, living with risk, the stock market. Check the online version of this story for some resources available at the Humboldt County Library. You'll be less easily fooled, and you might save yourself a boatload of money. For more insight into the mysteries of statistics, check out these books (books! real books!) at the Humboldt County Library: The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot 200% of Nothing by A.K. Dewdney A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel Overcoming Math Anxiety by Sheila Tobias |
4914
From: Gold Star, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
| Take it from me, an actuary, that life expectancy is the age at which half of the population has already died and the rest will die after that age. As you say, infant mortality is the real reason life expectancy has been so low in the past. Lower infant mortality is also a major reason the world population has zoomed up to over 7 billion in recent centuries. |
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[4915]
4915
From: blindhog, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
| GoldStar, ignorance of that very fact is why our financial safty net is in trouble. The age when one retires, gets social security benefits, and pension benefits should have been adjusted every year after the creation of that program and others like it. |
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4912
From: et, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re:Actually who has a better chance of winning depends on a subtle ...
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… distinction. I hold that Bob has a better chance of winning than Alice, especially when we consider throwing the dice favor the dice landing differently rather than the same… Oh nice try with switching from " the first time every die lands differently" to "Bob will never get his seven different numbers". The second example of the busses may also be open to interpretation… for even one bus could do the feat… to transport all the solider from point a to point b in 32 trips… |
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4911
From: mr bopp, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
| RIP roger hunter...if he didn't reply to this he must be gone... |
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4909
From: Quartz, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
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Lots of interesting mathematical points here, and points on human education and psychology. Sidenote that the first paragraph made me think of though: if we're talking about contemporary times, for those of us into gaming, our first thought might not be of 6-sided dice. This did cause me to look up when the earliest more than 6 side dice were just now. Wikipedia says 7 and 8 sided dice were mentioned as early as the 13th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice But on a more serious note, this reminds me of a dream I had years ago: I had to convince people to take a certain course of action, otherwise we'd die (it was complicated but that's the gist). No amount of reasoning or logic got through to them. So I started writing random math symbols and equations on the board, they didn't mean anything, just looked like math and numbers. This convinced them. Simply because it looked intellectual and none of them had enough knowledge to see that it was gibberish, and no one had the courage to ask for an explanation. People and their lack of math skills, combined with their attitude toward math, and statistics as somehow always scientific, are somewhat frightening. I don't count myself as separate, my own skills and knowledge are sadly lacking in too many areas. |
4913
From: et, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: No amount of reasoning or logic got through to them...
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… that's because for the addicts the logical reasonable thing to do be to consume ! It took me a long time to realize that when someone who is wrong tells somebody who is right that somebody is wrong it appropriately reflects the truth of the matter that somebody is right and someone is wrong! The belief language in use can influence what individuals observe perceive and appreciate… A few months ago I had a conversation with my sister where I expressed to her how I loved taking a complicated matter in one domain transposing it to a different domain where the matter was rather simple to observe and resolve and then doing the conversion of the solution back to the original domain…. she said that was great… I told her that it also worked the other way around… taking a simple matter in one domain transposing it to a different domain where the matter was rather complicated to observe and resolve and then doing the conversion of the solution back to the original domain…. of course assuming one doesn't get lost in the complicated domain... she said that was a ridiculous thing to do… curious how the same notion was welcomed and was rejected depending on the particular example I chose to employ to share the notion… I mention this because of your indirect reference to employing an 'alternate language'… you are right many do still have to develop the courage to ask questions… and the sagacity to know which questions to ask… and when to ask them… and how to go about it… People and their skills, combined with their attitude , and statistics can be quite frightening especially when they resort to brute force to get their ways rather than more reasonable and amenable ways… |
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4910
From: mr bopp, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
| thanks for the info on early dice...did not know that...as for your dream, whenever I hear someone speak in another language it always sounds so intelligent, but unfortunately, that is mostly gibberish too...lol... |
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