full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Mona Chalabi: 3 ways to spot a bad statistic
Unscramble the Blue Letters
I want to give you guys three questions that will help you be able to spot some bad statistics. So, qiuoetsn number one is: Can you see utetarnciny? One of things that's really changed people's relationship with nurbems, and even their trust in the media, has been the use of political polls. I plolasnery have a lot of issues with pcoaitill polls because I think the role of journalists is actually to report the facts and not attempt to predict them, especially when those predictions can actually damage democracy by signaling to people: don't bother to vote for that guy, he doesn't have a chance. Let's set that aside for now and talk about the aacucrcy of this endeavor.
Open Cloze
I want to give you guys three questions that will help you be able to spot some bad statistics. So, ________ number one is: Can you see ___________? One of things that's really changed people's relationship with _______, and even their trust in the media, has been the use of political polls. I __________ have a lot of issues with _________ polls because I think the role of journalists is actually to report the facts and not attempt to predict them, especially when those predictions can actually damage democracy by signaling to people: don't bother to vote for that guy, he doesn't have a chance. Let's set that aside for now and talk about the ________ of this endeavor.
Solution
- numbers
- question
- accuracy
- uncertainty
- personally
- political
Original Text
I want to give you guys three questions that will help you be able to spot some bad statistics. So, question number one is: Can you see uncertainty? One of things that's really changed people's relationship with numbers, and even their trust in the media, has been the use of political polls. I personally have a lot of issues with political polls because I think the role of journalists is actually to report the facts and not attempt to predict them, especially when those predictions can actually damage democracy by signaling to people: don't bother to vote for that guy, he doesn't have a chance. Let's set that aside for now and talk about the accuracy of this endeavor.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
unemployment rate |
4 |
everyday lives |
2 |
government statistics |
2 |
spot bad |
2 |
bad statistics |
2 |
political polls |
2 |
academic study |
2 |
decimal places |
2 |
show people |
2 |
swimming pool |
2 |
holy war |
2 |
Important Words
- accuracy
- attempt
- bad
- bother
- chance
- changed
- damage
- democracy
- endeavor
- facts
- give
- guy
- guys
- issues
- journalists
- lot
- media
- number
- numbers
- personally
- political
- polls
- predict
- predictions
- question
- questions
- relationship
- report
- role
- set
- signaling
- spot
- statistics
- talk
- trust
- uncertainty
- vote