Has anyone read "200% of nothing"?

Dustin Kesselberg

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Nov 30, 2004
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By A.K. Dewdney(Sp?)?

It's about bad math. How the media and politicans use statistics to lie to all of us?


It gives all kinds of examples of "bad math" from probability pumping to the so called "law of averages"(I've rolled the dice so many times I'm bound to get a lucky roll).

It also deals with statistics and how they can be made to fool those of us who are "inumerate".
 
Hey, thanks for mentioning the book and the author.

I read it about six years ago and loved it. I copied down the title and the author, intending to purchase a copy of it, and then lost the paper I wrote it on. I'll go to Amazon and see if I can find a copy now.

BTW, fantastic read. From what I recall, it was damn useful.

Athon
 
athon said:
Hey, thanks for mentioning the book and the author.

I read it about six years ago and loved it. I copied down the title and the author, intending to purchase a copy of it, and then lost the paper I wrote it on. I'll go to Amazon and see if I can find a copy now.

BTW, fantastic read. From what I recall, it was damn useful.

Athon
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Does this refer to the OP book or the book in the post above yours?
 
As for Paulos, he also wrote a book titled A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, which I highly recommend.
 
Dustin said:
By A.K. Dewdney(Sp?)?

It's about bad math. How the media and politicans use statistics to lie to all of us?
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Dewdney wrote a book about how people use statistics to lie? Well, he should know. His name comes up a lot in 9/11 conspiracy circles. In order to "prove" that passengers on the hijacked flights could not have made phone calls, he took some cell phones up to 8,000 feet in his Cessna over London, Ontario, and extrapolated that there is virtually no chance of a cell phone working at 32,000 feet. Case closed. (Never mind that many of the calls were made with the planes' installed Airphones.) Dewdney's "research" is used constantly by the conspiracy believers to show that the cell phone calls were faked. He called his cell phone escapade "Project Achilles." No bias there, huh?
 
I have found that it is extremely difficult to look at statistics and come to accurate conclusions. One trap is trying to get statistics to produce a certain result. Any fool can do that. Result - people on both sides of many debates say the statistics support their case.
 
rjh01 said:
I have found that it is extremely difficult to look at statistics and come to accurate conclusions. One trap is trying to get statistics to produce a certain result. Any fool can do that. Result - people on both sides of many debates say the statistics support their case.
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I think one needs to distinguish between ignorance on the part of the person being fed distorted conclusions and statistical evidence. To claim that stats don't provide relevant data is absurd.

People are not just misled by stats, they are misled by research. It's all in one's knowledge of interpreting data, whether the data is statistical or not.

Statistics are extremely useful in epidemiology. They are useful in risk assessment. I'm sure there are many more sciences that statistics are very important in.

By the same token, I can mislead you with all sorts of data. Listerine kills germs. So what? What really matters is does Listerine prevent or cure disease? No, it doesn't, in case you were wondering. Do here's a typical case where the data also does not support the conclusion.

The bottom line is people are misled easily when we don't teach the basics of data interpretation. And we should be teaching it as a mandatory skill in primary school.

Reading, writing and math...and when science is covered in primary school, is there any inclusion of data interpretation? I think not. We teach how to do a bit of research, maybe. There is always the science fair. But have you seen any science class in primary school include interpreting results?

My guess is the teachers think that is something for advanced science. I think it is a critical skill we are not including in children's basic education.
 
There was a book out on a similar theme a few years ago, Innumeracy:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/08...8917/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-7725066-7403829?ie=UTF8

Fellow quite intertainingly showed how typical media use of statistics and such skewed news stories.

I well recall a headline from my days with the local County police; "County Murder Rate Up 100%!" It was too. We had one homicide the previous year, and two that year...
 
skeptigirl said:
I think one needs to distinguish between ignorance on the part of the person being fed distorted conclusions and statistical evidence. To claim that stats don't provide relevant data is absurd.

People are not just misled by stats, they are misled by research. It's all in one's knowledge of interpreting data, whether the data is statistical or not.
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My opinion is that few people, including "rationalists" and "critical thinkers", take the time to examine the research data and methodology, and that even fewer look for corroborating data to support the conclusions. Unfortunately, this leads to reliance on broadcast media to interpret the data, which they are accustomed to do -- completely wrong. I recall a study comparing low carbohydrate and low fat diets. The study design had <100 participants all >40 BMI who were randomized to one of the treatment groups. The conclusions were mixed based on the limited number of participants, the high drop-out rate, and the limited study period (best as I can recall, 6 months). But the news media (a national one at that) reported the study as conclusive evidence that both diets were effective at improving a multitude of risk factors, but further reported that the low-carb diet was superior to the low-fat diet in improving glycemic control, even though the P value was >0.05.

BTW, I recently heard a statistic (on Dr. Jim Brackman's program) that coronary heart disease is no longer the dominant cause of mortality in the US. I tried finding mortality statistics but have had no luck. Anyone?
 
rjh01 said:
I have found that it is extremely difficult to look at statistics and come to accurate conclusions. One trap is trying to get statistics to produce a certain result. Any fool can do that. Result - people on both sides of many debates say the statistics support their case.
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98% of statistics are made up on the spot.
 
Jorghnassen said:
100% of all "x% of statistics are made up on the spot" statements are made up on the spot.
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47% of all "100% of all 'x% of statistics are made up on the spot' statements are made up on the spot" statements are based in fact.
 
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