Making sense of data.

in #data3 years ago

Worth spending 40 minutes to watch this. It's an excellent discussion of statistics, most of which looks at some of the problems with the way figures to do with the pandemic are used.

The discussion of how exponential growth does not necessarily mean fast as that depends on the doubling time is particularly good. This all reminds me of John Allen Paulos's two little books on popular and elite innumeracy and the problems they cause in policy discussion.

She also covers one of my pet hates which is conflating absolute and relative risk. This should also make us more lenient towards policy makers (well a little) because it does make clear how they are in a situation where they can know roughly where things were two weeks ago but not where they are now, which makes decision making very difficult.

(the answer is not to do things on a short term basis but to adopt a long-term strategy that you adjust as required and to set that out very clearly at the onset so that people know what is going on).

Angela Merkel's speech back at the start of the pandemic was a masterclass in how to do that.

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