"whatever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'?"
A math problem for you: Given an innumerate judge, an innumerate prosecution, an innumerate defense, and 12 innumerate jury members, what is the probability that a fundamentally-innumerate verdict will be reached?
Using statistics for decisions we don't want decided with statistics is problem, but as far as I can tell right now it is flat-out dominated by the fact nobody can use them correctly. Truthfully, having learned quite a lot of math, my feeling is that when a "normal person" starts hearing about statistics and they get the "eyes glaze over" thing going on, that's the rational answer. I wish more people understood basic physics, I wish more people understood basic finances and the principles of interest, but, honestly, when a normal person encounters a statistic they should pretty much just ignore it. The odds that a given stat either came from someone innumerate, or someone deliberately (or accidentally!) bending it to make a predetermined point (which makes the stat useless) really, truly, no sarcasm, no cynicism, are so close to 100% that simply ignoring is the best answer.
A math problem for you: Given an innumerate judge, an innumerate prosecution, an innumerate defense, and 12 innumerate jury members, what is the probability that a fundamentally-innumerate verdict will be reached?
Using statistics for decisions we don't want decided with statistics is problem, but as far as I can tell right now it is flat-out dominated by the fact nobody can use them correctly. Truthfully, having learned quite a lot of math, my feeling is that when a "normal person" starts hearing about statistics and they get the "eyes glaze over" thing going on, that's the rational answer. I wish more people understood basic physics, I wish more people understood basic finances and the principles of interest, but, honestly, when a normal person encounters a statistic they should pretty much just ignore it. The odds that a given stat either came from someone innumerate, or someone deliberately (or accidentally!) bending it to make a predetermined point (which makes the stat useless) really, truly, no sarcasm, no cynicism, are so close to 100% that simply ignoring is the best answer.