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

  1. numbers
  2. question
  3. accuracy
  4. uncertainty
  5. personally
  6. 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

  1. accuracy
  2. attempt
  3. bad
  4. bother
  5. chance
  6. changed
  7. damage
  8. democracy
  9. endeavor
  10. facts
  11. give
  12. guy
  13. guys
  14. issues
  15. journalists
  16. lot
  17. media
  18. number
  19. numbers
  20. personally
  21. political
  22. polls
  23. predict
  24. predictions
  25. question
  26. questions
  27. relationship
  28. report
  29. role
  30. set
  31. signaling
  32. spot
  33. statistics
  34. talk
  35. trust
  36. uncertainty
  37. vote