Module 1

What’s the story?

- Meaning of statistical information
o Truth is based on the characteristics and context of the data
- Cognitive biases:
o Best trigger the interpretation. Understanding bias help us understand better
- Survivorship bias:
o Interviewing only the “successful” samples but ignores the “failure” group
- False causality:
o Assumption that if two things are related or one follows the other, that one must
cause the other.
- Affirming Consequence fallacy:
o If the consequent is true, then the antecedent must also be true (if A then B; B is
true so A must also be true)
- Base Rate Fallacy
o Relying on individuating information rather than the base rate
o Ex: if someone wins the lottery, you will believe winning is much more likely
- Other stat related biases:
o Relative size: if chart looks twice as big, it seems twice as likely.
o Slope: the steeper the graph, the greater the increase/decrease
- Recap:
o Stat is a critical tool. The meaning or truth of stat info is based on many factors.

What’s the story in the media?

- Misrepresentation of the story in the media

o Manipulating y and x axis can change the story that chart tells.
o Zooming into a shorter span of a chart can tell a different story than overall data.
“cherry-picking”

Probability
- LLN states that if the events are independent, then as the number of tests or trials
increases, the long run relative frequency of an event gets closer and closer to true
value.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/expiration-of-bush-tax-cuts-would-cost-families-thousands-
in-2011-study-shows
https://flowingdata.com/2012/08/06/fox-news-continues-charting-excellence/

1. What story are the authors trying to tell with these statistics (what is the
apparent message)?
2. What is unclear, inaccurate, or misleading about the story?
3. What might be a more accurate or alternative message?
 1. The chart has been created to emphasize Canada's most severe wildfire season by year,
illustrating the total area burned over the past few years during the fire season.
2. Although the data is accurate, the author's focus on the chart begins only from 2016,
limiting the X-axis to six months. Consequently, the 2023 fire appears to be an
extraordinary outlier. The historical data reveals that in 1989, 18.3 million acres were
burned, and in 1995, 18 million acres were burned, figures more in line with the 2023
data.
3. The presentation of the data could be improved by replotting it with a full-year X-axis
and incorporating data from the 1980s. This expansion of the data sample will facilitate
a more comprehensive comparison, shedding light on the severity of the 2023 fires and
enabling the examination of factors that might have contributed to such occurrences in
both past and present contexts.

Reply to a stat:

Hi Rani,

Thank you for sharing this post. The graph illustrates a consistent decline in the financial returns
of higher education over each decade, suggesting that the investment in higher education may
be losing its value. However, for a comprehensive understanding, it's important to include a
comparison of the income disparity between college graduates and high school graduates,
which has also expanded significantly over the past several decades.
Also, it is not clear the salary used for this graph is for new grads or experienced candidates.
Without these specific details, drawing a clear conclusion becomes challenging.