How many people really understand numbers in the news?
Discussion
I saw this morning that the government is announcing plans to spend £30m on repairing school sports facilities! This largesse will, we're told, do wonders for leveling up and helping deprived areas!
Of course if you start thinking about it in terms of what you'd do if you won £30m on the lottery, it feels like a huge sum of money, but in reality, it's about £1,500 per school, or £3 per child! I was recently quoted roughly double that to re-fence our garden (roughly the size of a tennis court), so just how far is that money going to go with schools maybe needing to fence an actual tennis court or whatever?
Likewise, all the way through the pandemic, we were spoon-fed daily death numbers so that we could see just how horrific the damage was, but how often did you ever see the government or their experts accompanying this with the fact that on average around 1,600 people die in this country every day anyway?
This isn't me having a dig at the Tories, because every party, business or news organisation tends to do it as well, so much as a belief that we should include the Statistical analysis of news stories as part of the national curriculum.
In a different vein, people tend to respond very emotionally to stories about levels of poverty in the UK - whether it be to call for the poor paupers to be supported or to tell them to get a job - without necessarily realising that official statistics measure poverty based on household income relative to the national average, so the only way you could "eliminate poverty" would be to pay every household the exact same amount, and that doing so would, based on the way poverty is calculated, completely eliminate it regardless of whether the amount received wasn't enough to provide food and basic housing, or was enough to spend your whole life on a luxury cruise.
As things stand, it feels like far too many people take decisions or cast their votes based on an emotional reaction to numbers without really understanding if it makes sense statistically to respond in the way they do.
Surely there has to be a better way, whether it be teaching analysis at school, or requiring any such figures to be published along with an objective explanation of context?
Of course if you start thinking about it in terms of what you'd do if you won £30m on the lottery, it feels like a huge sum of money, but in reality, it's about £1,500 per school, or £3 per child! I was recently quoted roughly double that to re-fence our garden (roughly the size of a tennis court), so just how far is that money going to go with schools maybe needing to fence an actual tennis court or whatever?
Likewise, all the way through the pandemic, we were spoon-fed daily death numbers so that we could see just how horrific the damage was, but how often did you ever see the government or their experts accompanying this with the fact that on average around 1,600 people die in this country every day anyway?
This isn't me having a dig at the Tories, because every party, business or news organisation tends to do it as well, so much as a belief that we should include the Statistical analysis of news stories as part of the national curriculum.
In a different vein, people tend to respond very emotionally to stories about levels of poverty in the UK - whether it be to call for the poor paupers to be supported or to tell them to get a job - without necessarily realising that official statistics measure poverty based on household income relative to the national average, so the only way you could "eliminate poverty" would be to pay every household the exact same amount, and that doing so would, based on the way poverty is calculated, completely eliminate it regardless of whether the amount received wasn't enough to provide food and basic housing, or was enough to spend your whole life on a luxury cruise.
As things stand, it feels like far too many people take decisions or cast their votes based on an emotional reaction to numbers without really understanding if it makes sense statistically to respond in the way they do.
Surely there has to be a better way, whether it be teaching analysis at school, or requiring any such figures to be published along with an objective explanation of context?
voyds9 said:
What's the other famous one, the Royal family costs the equivalent of a Mars bar per person
Indeed.It's the same line with the TV licence. Take a number, divide it by a large number to arrive at a very small number and then trumpet the result.
So it's £159 a year, divide it by 365 and then you can say how little the TV is at only 43p per day.
So trumpet 43p a day and not £159 a year.
Or, it works equally well when you want trumpet the opposite, as the OP has done.
I don't think people respond to £ numbers whether they understand them or not.
What they do respond to (at the ballot box) is whether they have been directly affected by extended waiting times, bins not being collected, increased taxes, reductions in benefits, power cuts, poor road surfaces, lack of police etc. Those things generally take years to fix.
What they do respond to (at the ballot box) is whether they have been directly affected by extended waiting times, bins not being collected, increased taxes, reductions in benefits, power cuts, poor road surfaces, lack of police etc. Those things generally take years to fix.
That £30m will do feck all in the scheme of things, might as well not bother.
You can add basic economics to the equation. "Wealthy MPs are earning THREE TIMES average salary!", i.e. circa £80k, yet people wonder why we have a political class who are idiots.
Same for the police etc. etc. and so on.
You can add basic economics to the equation. "Wealthy MPs are earning THREE TIMES average salary!", i.e. circa £80k, yet people wonder why we have a political class who are idiots.
Same for the police etc. etc. and so on.
The atmospheric level of CO2 is 0.04% - catastrophe
In pre-industrial times it was 0.026% - perfection
The rise of 0.014 percentage points is the difference between safety and disaster.
It sounds a lot more frightening if you use parts per million. From 260 to 400 p.p.m.
I'm afraid I can't express that in Olympic swimming pools, double-decker buses, or football pitches and the other unit of size, Nelson's Column, is Imperialistic and must be removed.
In pre-industrial times it was 0.026% - perfection
The rise of 0.014 percentage points is the difference between safety and disaster.
It sounds a lot more frightening if you use parts per million. From 260 to 400 p.p.m.
I'm afraid I can't express that in Olympic swimming pools, double-decker buses, or football pitches and the other unit of size, Nelson's Column, is Imperialistic and must be removed.
Unless you're thinking about what numbers mean regularly or at least take the time to stop and think what they mean when you see them in the news, then your immediate reaction to hearing a "big" number might as well be random.
A long time ago I worked alongside financial journalists, and, frankly, most of them could do basic sums but had no feel for what the numbers meant beyond "that sounds big". Percentage changes in the difference between two large and nearly equal numbers, for example.
If you make a little bit of effort to translate numbers into things we instinctively understand, you can get insight into an awful lot of stuff that people often call "unimaginable". Converting stuff to time as in the example above is a great way of doing it. You can also do it with distance. For example I know what 1mm looks like. I know what 300km is like; drive to Cornwall (or I can stand on to of a hill and see 50km in any direction). The ratio of the 1mm to 300km is the same as the ratio of my age to the age of the Universe.
A long time ago I worked alongside financial journalists, and, frankly, most of them could do basic sums but had no feel for what the numbers meant beyond "that sounds big". Percentage changes in the difference between two large and nearly equal numbers, for example.
If you make a little bit of effort to translate numbers into things we instinctively understand, you can get insight into an awful lot of stuff that people often call "unimaginable". Converting stuff to time as in the example above is a great way of doing it. You can also do it with distance. For example I know what 1mm looks like. I know what 300km is like; drive to Cornwall (or I can stand on to of a hill and see 50km in any direction). The ratio of the 1mm to 300km is the same as the ratio of my age to the age of the Universe.
Reporting profits is another one, & one the press is guilty of causing public sensationalising & anger..
Man in the street often finds reports obscene of “millions” or “billions” levels of profits for shareholders (Eg supermarkets etc) but has no concept of what that is as a return on the investment. Same man in the street (now he has a workplace pension to look at) complains his pension doesn’t grow fast enough….
Man in the street often finds reports obscene of “millions” or “billions” levels of profits for shareholders (Eg supermarkets etc) but has no concept of what that is as a return on the investment. Same man in the street (now he has a workplace pension to look at) complains his pension doesn’t grow fast enough….
I am regularly shocked how so many don’t actually understand what the numbers mean or even how the systems of tax work in this country.
The people living in poverty one always annoys me, mainly as it seams to be screamed a lot about and it’s just shows an incredible lack of self awareness. I would love to take these people to India so that they can tell those in shanties the horrors of poverty in the UK.
The other is tax rich! Mainly spouted by people who don’t have any idea how much tax those on high incomes actually pay. Highlighted by some of my friends sharing all over my Facebook New Zealand’s new tax increase on wealthy. Lots of posts about how we should do this in the UK. On reading article became clear the new tax increase was 1% up to 39% considerably less than is paid here now. Totally clueless.
The people living in poverty one always annoys me, mainly as it seams to be screamed a lot about and it’s just shows an incredible lack of self awareness. I would love to take these people to India so that they can tell those in shanties the horrors of poverty in the UK.
The other is tax rich! Mainly spouted by people who don’t have any idea how much tax those on high incomes actually pay. Highlighted by some of my friends sharing all over my Facebook New Zealand’s new tax increase on wealthy. Lots of posts about how we should do this in the UK. On reading article became clear the new tax increase was 1% up to 39% considerably less than is paid here now. Totally clueless.
People are not rational beings. They are foremost emotional and tribal. They rationalize, after the emotional decision. A minority reach the level of reason, but it is rarely total or full time. That is how we are.
As to improving the situation? Schools do not attempt to overcome this. That is not what they are for. We are trained, just enough to pull the levers of the machines they want us to operate.
This status quo is working very well, for those in charge. So who would change it and why would they change it?
As to improving the situation? Schools do not attempt to overcome this. That is not what they are for. We are trained, just enough to pull the levers of the machines they want us to operate.
This status quo is working very well, for those in charge. So who would change it and why would they change it?
Anyone even slightly interested in numbers should listen to this. 89.7% of non idiots agree.*
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd
- I made that bit up.
eldar said:
Anyone even slightly interested in numbers should listen to this. 89.7% of non idiots agree.*
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd
Hear, hear. Brilliant programme. One useful trick from "More or Less" when politicians start bandying huge numbers about; divide by the population of the UK to get something on a more human scale.https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd
- I made that bit up.
And to answer the original question, hardly anyone; especially when politicians are seeking to deceive (which they generally are).
Edited by Zumbruk on Sunday 3rd October 13:58
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