It’s on this kind of thought process that I have issues with statistics being used by people who don’t really understand them.
I’m not trying to get on a high horse and exclaim that the common people shouldn’t cite studies and stats, but if you are going to cite them, cite them fully. More often than not, by adding a standard deviation and median to an average, you get a picture much closer to what is actually occurring. But even after that, there are other tests which can yield a whole bunch of information that could be more useful towards refining the picture.
I guess if you are going to cite a study, you should take the time to read through the math people tend to skip over, or at least, read all of the conclusions drawn from the math, and not simply mine reports for the facts that happen to work for your argument.
It’s on this kind of thought process that I have issues with statistics being used by people who don’t really understand them.
I’m not trying to get on a high horse and exclaim that the common people shouldn’t cite studies and stats, but if you are going to cite them, cite them fully. More often than not, by adding a standard deviation and median to an average, you get a picture much closer to what is actually occurring. But even after that, there are other tests which can yield a whole bunch of information that could be more useful towards refining the picture.
I guess if you are going to cite a study, you should take the time to read through the math people tend to skip over, or at least, read all of the conclusions drawn from the math, and not simply mine reports for the facts that happen to work for your argument.