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Showing posts from January, 2017

Statistically Speaking

I love statistics. My favorite math classes in college were statistics classes. Statistics can be quite helpful. And they never lie. Did you catch that? Statistics never lie. But. People do. We are quite capable of taking in numerical information and manipulating it to align with our personal platforms. You see, a statistic is just a number. It actually means nothing all by itself. We have to evaluate it to determine a meaning. For example, if i were to tell you that statistically, you are more likely to be overweight if you eat at McDonald's, you might consider that to mean McDonald's equals weight gain. You + McD's = weight gain However, that is not the case. Even if that statistic is true (i'm totally throwing that out there without any knowledge of validity), it doesn't really prove anything. See, statistics are tricky. In the right hands, statistics help us understand trends, evaluate the effects of set variables on a set population, and interpret