Statistics in the news

Today while looking at the Mathematical Association of America website (they have really great columns there every month) I saw this article article by Keith Devlin where he talks about some statistics that were reported in a newspaper. His point is that if they are read wrong, statistics can be used to mislead people in a big way. I really wish more people would read articles like this, that way when confronted with newspaper articles reporting a 95% increase in <insert bad thing here> they will be able to look objectively at the numbers and decide if what is being reported is probable or if it is meant to scare.

A lot of people don’t realize that just because something is possible, it does not mean it is probable.

Tags: probability, possibility, stats