What Is Statistics?: Crash Course Statistics #1

Welcome to Crash Course Statistics! In this series, we’re going to take a look at the important role statistics play in our everyday lives. Statistics help us better understand the world and make decisions from what you’ll wear tomorrow to government policy. But in the wrong hands, statistics can be used to misinform. So we’re going to try to do two things in this series: 1) Help show you the usefulness of statistics, and 2) help you become a more informed consumer of statistics. From probabilities, paradoxes, and p-values there’s a lot to cover in this series, and there will be some math, but we promise only when it’s most important. But first, we should talk about what statistics actually are, and what we can do with them. Statistics are tools, but they can’t give us all the answers.

Episode Notes:

On Tea Tasting: “The Lady Tasting Tea” by David Salsburg

On Chain Saw Injuries: https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/chainsaws.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15027558

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/aem/2015/459697/