How To Lie With Statistics Podcast #1

Posted by Tamira Bell in Statistics - Miles - C on

​Here is our first podcast about the book How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff. 

Speakers: 
  • Felix d'Hermillion
  • Tamira Bell
  • Angelica Owens


Points discussed:
  • Examples of how the audience/population is deceived by statistical studies that are biased. 
  • How bias is almost unavoidable in a study.
  • Which is the better and most accurate average: mean, median, or mode?
  • How the average can be skewed depending on the spread of the data and minimum/maximum.
Each topic was discussed by pulling a quote from the text and then everyone offered their opinion. 


Conflicts or Disagreements:
There were no disagreements about what we found in the text. We all agreed that is very easy to lie or deceive an audience or population with a very biased study.


Questions:
  • Have we used statistics in our lives to lie to people?
  • How can we conduct a study that has the least amount of bias as possible and represents the population it's surveying fairly?


Link To Our Podcast:

Comments (1)

Mark Miles (Teacher)
Mark Miles

Good first podcast, but I would like to hear Angelica more. Next time, try to upload the mp3 itself so the podcast doesn't need to be downloaded.

For next time, please respond to the following prompts:

  1. Choose one of the quotations inside the front cover and discuss how it relates to the Introduction.
  2. Put the second paragraph on Page 18 (“A river cannot….”) into your own words.
  3. What is the advantage of a stratified random sample and what difficulties does it pose, according to this chapter?
  4. When we see an average reported, what do we need to ask besides which kind of average is being used? Why?

Finally, when discussing chapters 3, 5, or 6, incorporate the following article into your discussion:

http://gizmodo.com/how-to-lie-with-data-visualization-1563576606

Also, each member of your group should find an article online containing a misleading graph and discuss it during the podcast (be sure to talk about why it’s misleading!). Be sure to include a link to all articles in the text of your post of the podcast that corresponds to chapters 3, 5, or 6.