Warning : reading this might cause a brain hemorrhage, or at least I'd like to think so.(incidentally, warning people not to do stuff makes them want to do it more.)
Ah yes, statistics. Various forms of statistics are accepted as tiny pieces of conventional wisdom. However, over time, the term "conventional wisdom" has turned the meaning of "conventional" around to be synonymous with other spectacular words such as "bollocks" and "rubbish". How so, you might ask? Right after someone says that something is conventional wisdom, what follows is a long, drawn out monologue about how the convention is wrong, the convention is outdated, yada yada. And if people actually accept this, it becomes the new convention, which in turn proves itself to be bullshit again. After it all, everyone is his or her own little special snowflake again, not bothering to take information from "reputable sources", "reliable tip-offs" and "Jessica Simpson", and as a result order(through chaos) is restored.
One of the rampant "bad statistics" around is that associated with traveling. Basically, what this says is that the most dangerous part of flying by plane is in fact going to the airport. Variations of this go along the lines of "you are X times likelier to die in a car than in an airplane" and "flying is the safest way to travel". So, how did this little stat come into being? My guess was that it was a marketing angle when traveling via airplane first became viable, since people would understandably be afraid of jumping into a long metal tube full of explosive fuel flying with no visible means of support. Of course, the alternative sales pitch was that you'd be higher up in the sky, closer to god. Of course, the slightly misleading statistic, which people tend to take as the gospel, won out.
Unfortuneately, as it always goes in life, things aren't really that simple. You probably have about the same amount of chance of dying in any one journey, be it in a car, plane or trishaw. That chance, is very,very remote. The stars would have to be aligned in a 4-4-2 formation for that to happen. Wait a minute, it's already happened at Real Madrid.
All right, let's try that from a non-sexist angle.
Suppose your chances of dying in a crash is something like 1 in 1 million. Incidentally, 70.358% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Now, you'd have to travel fourty-two times a day for sixty-five days a year to get up to that magical 1 million mark. Which means that if you found your life flashing before your eyes while in a vehicle, nobody would blame you for cursing your luck as you bleed to death out of multiple wounds to your liver and kidneys. Which means when you're on a vehicle, you shouldn't have to be worrying about meeting the tall guy in the black cloak holding the fearsome scythe who probably bears a resemblence to Craig David under that hood.
However, the only reason this statistic exists is that while we are aware of the inherent risks of driving and accept it as a part of everyday life, along with annoying people, overpriced food and having to shave, flying by airplane remains largely a mystery and a novelty, which people cower away from due to the fear of the unknown. Which, as a result, means that more car journeys occur than plane journeys at any single moment, and hence the number of people dying in car accidents would by far exceed the number of people who tried to get out and reach for the Gods in an airplane, which is how this statistic exists.
The point is, without a little perspective, numbers tend not to tell you jack. They don't tell you jill either. To rationalise this from a student's view, failing 3 out of 4 tests doesn't mean you have a 75% chance of failing the mid years. Looking at statistics this way can only serve to be frustrating. Have a good chance of passing, and you'll not really want to do the paper. Don't have a good chance of passing, sucks the wind out of you. Heck, to get an accurate statistic of such a procedure would probably have required you to take something like 245684283652 exams in your lifetime, and they'd have to be of the exact same difficulty, with you having the exact same knowledge going into each one for this to be accurate, and even then, you'd probably adapt so you'd have a better chance to pass each exam. Finally, number-cruching doesn't tell you how to actually go about passing an exam, though failing tends to be a whole lot easier. I mean, when I shoot a basketball, I know theres something like a one-in-3000 chance it'll land into the net, but I still shoot anyway. If you know you're probably going to fail, you'd probably still try to pass anyway.
Of course, I'm only writing this because I'm feeling awfully bitter about statistics right now, which I'm probably going to fail on tuesday.
Ah yes, statistics. Various forms of statistics are accepted as tiny pieces of conventional wisdom. However, over time, the term "conventional wisdom" has turned the meaning of "conventional" around to be synonymous with other spectacular words such as "bollocks" and "rubbish". How so, you might ask? Right after someone says that something is conventional wisdom, what follows is a long, drawn out monologue about how the convention is wrong, the convention is outdated, yada yada. And if people actually accept this, it becomes the new convention, which in turn proves itself to be bullshit again. After it all, everyone is his or her own little special snowflake again, not bothering to take information from "reputable sources", "reliable tip-offs" and "Jessica Simpson", and as a result order(through chaos) is restored.
One of the rampant "bad statistics" around is that associated with traveling. Basically, what this says is that the most dangerous part of flying by plane is in fact going to the airport. Variations of this go along the lines of "you are X times likelier to die in a car than in an airplane" and "flying is the safest way to travel". So, how did this little stat come into being? My guess was that it was a marketing angle when traveling via airplane first became viable, since people would understandably be afraid of jumping into a long metal tube full of explosive fuel flying with no visible means of support. Of course, the alternative sales pitch was that you'd be higher up in the sky, closer to god. Of course, the slightly misleading statistic, which people tend to take as the gospel, won out.
Unfortuneately, as it always goes in life, things aren't really that simple. You probably have about the same amount of chance of dying in any one journey, be it in a car, plane or trishaw. That chance, is very,very remote. The stars would have to be aligned in a 4-4-2 formation for that to happen. Wait a minute, it's already happened at Real Madrid.
All right, let's try that from a non-sexist angle.
Suppose your chances of dying in a crash is something like 1 in 1 million. Incidentally, 70.358% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Now, you'd have to travel fourty-two times a day for sixty-five days a year to get up to that magical 1 million mark. Which means that if you found your life flashing before your eyes while in a vehicle, nobody would blame you for cursing your luck as you bleed to death out of multiple wounds to your liver and kidneys. Which means when you're on a vehicle, you shouldn't have to be worrying about meeting the tall guy in the black cloak holding the fearsome scythe who probably bears a resemblence to Craig David under that hood.
However, the only reason this statistic exists is that while we are aware of the inherent risks of driving and accept it as a part of everyday life, along with annoying people, overpriced food and having to shave, flying by airplane remains largely a mystery and a novelty, which people cower away from due to the fear of the unknown. Which, as a result, means that more car journeys occur than plane journeys at any single moment, and hence the number of people dying in car accidents would by far exceed the number of people who tried to get out and reach for the Gods in an airplane, which is how this statistic exists.
The point is, without a little perspective, numbers tend not to tell you jack. They don't tell you jill either. To rationalise this from a student's view, failing 3 out of 4 tests doesn't mean you have a 75% chance of failing the mid years. Looking at statistics this way can only serve to be frustrating. Have a good chance of passing, and you'll not really want to do the paper. Don't have a good chance of passing, sucks the wind out of you. Heck, to get an accurate statistic of such a procedure would probably have required you to take something like 245684283652 exams in your lifetime, and they'd have to be of the exact same difficulty, with you having the exact same knowledge going into each one for this to be accurate, and even then, you'd probably adapt so you'd have a better chance to pass each exam. Finally, number-cruching doesn't tell you how to actually go about passing an exam, though failing tends to be a whole lot easier. I mean, when I shoot a basketball, I know theres something like a one-in-3000 chance it'll land into the net, but I still shoot anyway. If you know you're probably going to fail, you'd probably still try to pass anyway.
Of course, I'm only writing this because I'm feeling awfully bitter about statistics right now, which I'm probably going to fail on tuesday.
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