The last year and a half have put a very real spotlight on the use of numbers in the public forum like none other that I can remember. To the point that most people have no idea what the truth is actually, lies or misinformation. Tom Chivers and David Chivers have combined their perspective expertise, as science writer and assistant professor of economics respectively, to create an easy to read, often humorous look at those numbers, why they are that way and how to pull back from the emotion they insight to gain a rational perspective. How to Read Numbers is a statistical guide to the numbers in the news, that gives non-statistical individuals the tools necessary to look deeper, what questions to ask before responding, and just possibly creating a space for dialogue in our very polarize world today.
The authors have managed to thoroughly cover the pros, cons, conditions of collecting numbers for communicating with the public. I found their honest look at the possible unintentional manipulation of numbers fascinating. Particularly in terms of the demands of jobs that require production of numbers to sustain those places of employment. That the demands of media drive their content search out the latest and most sensational headlines, creating a blind spot to the larger picture and unintentional bias. This is paired with the scientists need to publish novel, breakout results that may or may not be significant. But that they can catch the attention of the public with profound hope of an improved future. I was particularly unnerved with the reference to the number of studies that are shelved because they disprove an earlier study or provide less than exciting results. This symbiotic relationship is further complicated by when politicians are thrown into the mix. Chivers and Chivers pointed out the general public are not the only ones who do not understand the numbers. That both media writers and politicians can easily misinterpret information that they have received and later pass on to the public.
This has certainly been true during the Covid-19 situation. There has been so much focus on the new and novel that any information about earlier studies on treatments of similar illnesses have been shoved to the back of the shelf. Personally, I have puzzled why there has been so little discussion around how people can build their immune system. But the demand for novelty all but ignored all previous learned truths. Then there is also the financial aspect that comes to play. If people can actually build their immune systems to fight a disease, there is no longer a need for expensive new treatments.
For me this book shown a light of revelation to the current polarization we now experience. The social media and memes of every kind seem to just further disseminate half-truths. And as my dad use to say there is no such thing as a half-truth. We have seen the use of small sample sizes, statistical significance, the emergence of confounders and the misappropriation of causality on all sides. The one example that stands out to me recently was the tragic passing of Collin Powell. It just depended on which news source what a person heard. There was a significant amount of cherry picking depending on a person\u2019s source. Some sources focused on that he apparently passed as a result of complications due to Covid-19. Another source stated that he had been full vaccinated and died of Covid-19 complications. Yet if we look closer, he in fact had been battling a blood cancer. Yes, he was fully vaccinated and tested positive to Covid-19 but is that really the lead? What if we just focused on the great contribution he made to our country and mourn with his family?
This book challenged me to look at my stakeholders for my workshop more closely. To be sure that is wide enough. Yet at the same time being aware of distractors in the form of confounders and predetermined biases. I also want to be sure to be open to questions and assumptions that I have not taught possible. I have not pinned these down yet, but I am certainly more conscience of the possible contaminates.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The last year and a half have put a very real spotlight on the use of numbers in the public forum like none other that I can remember. To the point that most people have no idea what the truth is actually, lies or misinformation. Tom Chivers and David Chivers have combined their perspective expertise, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2081,1223,2082,2083,2084],"class_list":["post-27815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lpg11","tag-polarization","tag-statistical-significance","tag-the-whole-truth","tag-wider-perspective","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27815"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27842,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27815\/revisions\/27842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}