A few glaring issues here: 1) Does the question imply causation or not? It shouldn’t. 2) Are these stats intended to be realistic such that I need to consider potential flaws and take a holistic view or just a toy scenario to test my numerical skills? If I believe it’s the former and I’m confident X and Y are positively correlated, a 2x2 grid showing X and Y negatively correlated should of course make me question the quality of your data proportionally. 3) Is this an adversarial question such that my response may be taken out of context or otherwise misused?
The sample interviews from Veritasium did not seem to address any of these issues: (1) They seemed to cut out the gun question, but the skin cream question implied causation, “Did the skin cream make the rash better or worse?” (2) One person mentioned “I Wouldn’t have expected that...” which implies he thought it was real data, (3) the last person clearly interpreted it adversarially.
In the original study, the question was stated as “cities that enacted a ban on carrying concealed handguns were more likely to have a decrease in crime.” This framing is not as bad, but still too close to implying causation in my opinion.
A few glaring issues here:
1) Does the question imply causation or not? It shouldn’t.
2) Are these stats intended to be realistic such that I need to consider potential flaws and take a holistic view or just a toy scenario to test my numerical skills? If I believe it’s the former and I’m confident X and Y are positively correlated, a 2x2 grid showing X and Y negatively correlated should of course make me question the quality of your data proportionally.
3) Is this an adversarial question such that my response may be taken out of context or otherwise misused?
The sample interviews from Veritasium did not seem to address any of these issues:
(1) They seemed to cut out the gun question, but the skin cream question implied causation, “Did the skin cream make the rash better or worse?”
(2) One person mentioned “I Wouldn’t have expected that...” which implies he thought it was real data,
(3) the last person clearly interpreted it adversarially.
In the original study, the question was stated as “cities that enacted a ban on carrying concealed handguns were more likely to have a decrease in crime.” This framing is not as bad, but still too close to implying causation in my opinion.