statistical. Such an approach to understanding the world is cumbersome, painstaking and slow: it sweats out useful knowledge in meagre drops rather than grand, persuasive narratives. But it has built the world we live in today. The arrival of ‘Big Data’ will re-inforce this, prompting Hal Varian of Google to declare that the ‘sexiest’ subject to study this century will be … statistics! Politics and public debate is not the same as science, but it is impoverished by the routine abuse and misuse of statistics. A civil servant
“ The Daily Mail recently declared
that a glass of wine increased ‘the risk of death by 15 per cent’
or journalist who writes gibberish can be given Sir Ernest Gowers’ Plain Words, or ridiculed in Pseuds Corner. In any event their ability to present, compare and analyse arguments will likely have been honed by several years of essay writing at university. But when they botch the numerical or statistical evidence it is less likely to be noticed. Partly this is because many of their colleagues will likely be fellow botchers. Perhaps more important is that the devil is typically in the numerical and statistical detail, while public discourse inevitably centres on the bigger picture. This creates grand opportunities for making statistical mischief. The remedy for this sorry state of affairs lies in improving standards. Sloppy use of numbers should become as unacceptable as turgid prose or speech. This would also give the media a more critical edge, and the ability to critically assess the mass of numbers thrown at it by government, corporations, NGOs and even scientists. Some of the responsibility for our current predicament lies with our education system.
”
Almost alone amongst developed countries, school pupils in the UK can stop studying maths at 16. Too many have a ‘bad experience’ of the maths they do study, and the maths curriculum itself is almost devoid of statistics. Other subjects (with the exception of Physics) restrict their maths content to remain ‘attractive’ to students and teachers. One might expect universities to do better but recruitment competition discourages higher maths entry requirements. MPs might have done PPE at Oxford. Unless they’d followed the economics pathway their degree would have been statistics- free. In the social sciences less attention is paid to statistics in the UK than elsewhere as three recent international benchmark reviews have highlighted. Things are, thankfully, changing. Fifteen
Q-Step centres in UK universities start this month. These are part of a £19 million-programme to revolutionise social statistics training in the social sciences, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the ESRC and HEFCE. Michael Gove has declared that all children should study maths until they leave school, and consultation is underway about how best to achieve that. The RSS Statistical Literacy Campaign, getstats, has developed training for journalists, managers and others. Perhaps the next step will be a statistical Ben Goldacre of bad numbers. Goodness knows there would be no shortage of material. n
* The debt (currently around £1.4 trillion) is the total amount of the state’s liabilities or borrowing; the deficit (currently about £120 billion) is the annual excess (or surplus) of government spending over receipts.
i
John MacInnes teaches a course in Statistical Literacy at the University of Edinburgh. He is a member of the advisory board for the Royal Statistical Society’s Statistical Literacy campaign, getstats, and is Stategic Advisor to the ESRC on Quantitative Methods Training. Web
www.sps.ed.ac.uk,
www.rss.org.uk
AUTUMN 2013 SOCIETY NOW 17
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