{"id":29473,"date":"2022-11-10T11:23:32","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T19:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=29473"},"modified":"2022-11-10T11:23:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T19:23:32","slug":"faulty-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/faulty-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Faulty Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI told ya\u2019ll!\u201d That was the declaration during our car ride as my friend exuberantly pointed out that he is the winner of the bet, and that he is (almost) always right. The latest bet was on the price of pomegranate at Wal-Mart and who can guess the closest price. The bet ensued to raise the stakes of the argument, throw in a quick website check, and our price is verified and a winner declared. I elected not to point out the \u201csample size fallacy\u201d with the amount of guesses and bets that are made on a near daily basis [1].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the statistical chances that my friend does have an ability to know the price of produce at any given moment? Statically speaking, probably not high, but he is bound to get some correct if he keeps guessing [2]. What If my friend pointed out that he has won the last eight-out-ten bets? That might change our perspective to be more in line with my friends. Imagine that after he points out the amount of bets he does get correct, our group decides that we will no longer bet my friend because he always wins. While this could be true, it is not based on enough statistical information that should be convincing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the argument by Tom Chivers and David Chivers in the their book, How to Read Numbers (A Guide to Stats in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them)<\/i> as they reveal how numbers are often used in ways that \u201c\u2026give misleading impressions\u201d [3]. Chivers and Chivers go on to say that the implications for the faulty use of numbers impact our lives to the extent that it even contributes to how people participate in our democracy [4].\u00a0 <\/span>It is necessary that we have an understanding of the numbers we use and see in the media because we rely on numbers to understand our world [5]. Despite any grand conspiracy that one might think is at hand, the misses of numbers is not necessarily malicious, it is due to the fact that we are narrative formed people and the numbers aid in our understanding of reality, therefore, it is up to use to be better informed about the numbers we see [6].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a church leader, I see the use of statistics in the evaluation of ministries. This evaluation is often based on anecdotal evidence that goes something like, \u201cworship attendance is decreasing because we switched to hymns. That is what I have heard from a few church members, anyway.\u201d Not only is this a small sample size, it does not follow that there is a correlation between the music that Sunday and church attendance. It could be that it was a home game for the Dallas Cowboys and a number of families in the church were in attendance or that it was a holiday weekend and people were traveling. As Chivers and Chivers point out, we use this kind of anecdotal evidence to create a narrative to make sense and it generally works well for personal use, but can have detrimental effects if applied in broader contexts [7].<\/p>\n

Whether it is a bet with a few friends or making sense of fluctuating attendance, it is eye-opening to see how numbers shape the decisions we make on a daily basis. It is not surprising that people who are not good with numbers come to different conclusions when the numbers lack context [8]. Perhaps I should point out that my friend is relying on a small sample size to gloat in his victory. While it will not change the outcome, perhaps it will be an invitation to scrutinize the numbers we rely on and why we even bet in the first place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. <\/i>Tom Chivers and David Chivers, How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them)<\/i> (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2022), 21.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. <\/i>See the \u201cTexas Sharpshooter Fallacy,\u201d Chivers and Chivers, 137.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. <\/i>Ibid., 2.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. <\/i>Ibid, 3.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. <\/i>Ibid.<\/li>\n
  6. <\/i>Ibid, 4.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. <\/i>Ibid., 19.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  8. <\/i>Ibid., 2.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cI told ya\u2019ll!\u201d That was the declaration during our car ride as my friend exuberantly pointed out that he is the winner of the bet, and that he is (almost) always right. The latest bet was on the price of pomegranate at Wal-Mart and who can guess the closest price. The bet ensued to raise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"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":[2347,2076],"class_list":["post-29473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp01","tag-chivers","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29473","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\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29474,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29473\/revisions\/29474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}