Suckered by statistics ERIC KIM

Suckered by Statistics

Ironically enough, studying the ‘easier’ AP [advanced placement] class (AP Statistics instead of AP Calculus) in high school paid off huge. It let me eventually end up flourishing in Sociology (statistics always made sense to me, and had real, practical ramifications). The gist is this:

Statistics can be gamed however you want it to be, and there is no truth in statistics.

In fact, statistics can probably only be useful in DISPROVING (Karl Popper’s notion of ‘falsification’) fallacious or misleading ideas. But even statistics has a weak ability to dis-suggest or “disprove” things. One thing I learned from statistics from Cindy is this:

Statistics comes from the word ‘state’ — it was the way a state quantified their progress, and how leaders in power could “prove” their advancement and growth in certain politics … especially in the socialist-communist governments of China/Russia (to prove their economics theories were ‘working’, even when they really weren’t).