Page 39 - Statistics for Dummies

Chapter 2
The Statistics of Everyday Life
In This Chapter
▶ Raising questions about statistics you see in everyday life
▶ Encountering statistics in the workplace
oday’s society is completely taken over by numbers. Numbers are
Teverywhere you look, from billboards showing the on-time statistics
for a particular airline, to sports shows discussing the Las Vegas odds for
upcoming football games. The evening news is filled with stories focusing on
crime rates, the expected life span of junk-food junkies, and the president’s
approval rating. On a normal day, you can run into 5, 10, or even 20 differ-
ent statistics (with many more on election night). Just by reading a Sunday
newspaper all the way through, you come across literally hundreds of statis-
tics in reports, advertisements, and articles covering everything from soup
(how much does an average person consume per year?) to nuts (almonds are
known to have positive health effects — what about other types of nuts?).
In this chapter I discuss the statistics that often appear in your life and work
and talk about how statistics are presented to the general public. After reading
this chapter, you’ll realize just how often the media hits you with numbers and
how important it is to be able to unravel the meaning of those numbers. Like
it or not, statistics are a big part of your life. So, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
And if you don’t want to join ’em, at least try to understand ’em.

Statistics and the Media: More

Questions than Answers?

Open a newspaper and start looking for examples of articles and stories involv-
ing numbers. It doesn’t take long before numbers begin to pile up. Readers are
inundated with results of studies, announcements of breakthroughs, statisti-
cal reports, forecasts, projections, charts, graphs, and summaries. The extent

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