Podcast 2

Anthony, Jamie, Taylor
STATS podcast 2

Comments (2)

Mark Miles (Teacher)
Mark Miles

I love the humor at the beginning. This was a really good discussion, but you didn't answer all of the questions from last time. I would not have had any questions for your last podcast. This podcast was really good!

Taylor Thomas (Student 2014)
Taylor Thomas

Group Members Present: Taylor Thomas, Jamie Murphy and Anthony Best

What your book club discussed: 3,4,5,6,&7

For this podcast we discussed chapters

How you discussed it: For the discussion we would summarize the book, talk about what it could relate to, and we talked about our articles as well. We would equally have a say on each chapter and let everyone say what they felt was needed.

Any points of conflict/disagreement in discussion:

For the most part nothing came up as a disagreement. We were all on the same page for the most part.

Questions that came up as a result of the discussion:

One question that came up was do pictures behind graphs or pictures as graphs really make you think that the data is different than what it is.

Links to articles

Jamie- http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_drug_use.shtml

This is a graph showing the amount of 12th graders ever having used substances such as drugs and alcohol. The y values should be in different intervals in order to really see the smaller percentages. Another fault within this graph that I found was the misleading percentages between “lifetime use” and “past 30 days”. The data could be wrong because the 12th graders who said they were lifetime users, also probably fall under the past 30 days category. Unless this poll was take otherwise, that needs to be stated.

Best- http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/10/01/a-history-of-dishonest-fox-charts/190225 “UNEMPLOYMENT” RATE UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA In Reality, Chart Had Grossly Distorted Scale To Give False Impression Of Unemployment Rate 11-Month History. The Fox graphic showed data that did not correspond to its own scale, putting the 8.6 percent unemployment rate in November 2011 higher on the chart than the March 8.8 percent rate, and at the same level as the 9 percent unemployment rate in October. The following chart clearly illustrates how Fox's chart was manipulated to hide the decrease in unemployment from October to November in 2011:

Taylor- http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/09/you-cant-deny-global-warming-after-seeing-this-graph/ This article explains how global warming cannot be denied. However the authors proof could be misleading. The graph shows the average temperature for periods of ten years. You would have to know at what time of year the temperature was taken for each ten year period, to be able to know if the data is the same. Also throughout ten years the temperature can fluctuate. Another reason this graph could be misleading is that the y-axis starts at 13.4 degrees Celsius and only goes to 14.5 degrees Celsius.