How to Lie With Statistics Pt. 2
This is podcast 2 of a 3-podcast series that dissects the novel, "How To Lie With Statistics" by Darrell Huff. The book itself explores the various ways that statistics are altered and used outright incorrectly to project a certain image, convey a certain feeling, or produce a certain outcome within the masses.
In this series, Stephanie Dyson, Dillon Hersey, Maggie Clampet-Lundquist and Sean Morris look into the various themes that comprise the book and dissect what this means, not only for their high school stats class, but for the world around them.
In this podcast:
We looked at Chapters 3 through 7 for this episode, but used the quotes in the beginning of the book to guide our conversation.Then, we took a look at how Huff explained that graphs can be misconstrued in various ways in The Gee Whiz Graph. From there, we took a look at the farce that is modern media, exploring the ways that news organizations use those various methods all the time to show “statistics” when they’re really not showing anything at all (the graphs we referenced are all pictured below). Lastly, we spoke briefly on the background information you need when thinking about averages so that you can most accurately convey your information. We also brainstormed some new titles for the book by accident, but they're not too shabby. I hope you enjoy this episode. Stay tuned for our final podcast, which will dive into chapters 8 through 10 to finish out the book.
Music is provided for free by Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment's debut album, "Surf", which dropped May 2015.
The Graph Dillon mentioned concerning abortions and cancer screenings. Read the full article here: http://www.stats.org/the-graph-that-launched-a-thousand-news-stories/
The graph Maggie mentioned concerning car crashes across different age groups. Read the full article here:http://www.econoclass.com/misleadingstats.html
The graph Stephanie mentioned concerning Stand Your Ground laws in Florida. Read the full article here: http://usvsth3m.com/post/82779802419/creator-defends-graph-that-appears-to-erroneously-show
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