Statistics plays are crucial to the daily activities of individuals, groups, and bodies in weighing on situations, make decisions and predict future outcomes. Based on its criticality, it follows that the procedures should include logic and rationality. But, unfortunately, the inability to apply reason and rationality in data analysis and interpretation leads to poor judgment and impaired decision-making. The video "How Juries Are Fooled by Statistics" by Peter Donnelly, an Oxford mathematician, explains how individuals fall into such a trap.
According to Donnelly, people are prone to commit common mistakes while interpreting statistics, giving a false impression ( Donnelly, 2006). Initially, Donnelly leads us through the concept of probability coin tossing. When a coin is tossed, the expected outcomes are either head or tail. The results tend to overlap each other. However, individual biasness on the randomness, uncertainty, and chance of an outcome happening based on a previous one or other criteria is the reason behind the misinterpretations. Donnelly uses several industries to show how experts usually got it wrong. For instance, the human genome project is based on intuitive thinking in that diseases are quickly linked to specific genetics without considering other possible contributing factors. The famous case is Sally Clark's. Clark was falsely convicted of double murder by the jury. The conviction was based on expert opinion. Unfortunately, the lawyer, jury, medical industry, and society accepted the statistics presented by the expert ( Donnelly, P. (2006). The expert got it wrong by relying on a study that stipulated that the second child's death from cot was independent of the death of the first child. The study showed that the risk of cot deaths from non-smoking, professional families was 1 in 8500. Donnelly views the approach as illogical since it does not consider the chances of other environmental or genetic factors contributing to the deaths.
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Donnelly's talk is crucial in my personal, career, and professional life. Initially, my activities involve making critical decisions based on probabilities. Some of the vital areas I am concerned with are academic and financial life. Consequently, there are several expert opinions on how to succeed in these areas based on certain studies. The talk has evoked a sense of determining the relevancy, accuracy, and validity of such data before applying it in real life. The case of Sally Clark elaborates how experts can be biased by the randomness, uncertainty, and chance of an outcome happening based on an underlying factor. Since probabilities overlap, I ought to provide room for other external factors affecting the outcomes before accepting the results.
Professionally I would be assessing the competencies of learners. Donnelly's talk has laid a foundation for increasing the validity, relevancy, and accuracy of data necessary to analyze and improve learners' competencies. Learners' abilities are shaped by different genetic and environmental factors that an instructor may be unaware of. While evaluating learners' physical, social, cognitive, and emotional skills, I ought to develop several hypotheses to collect, analyze, and present data. Similarly, I ought to use logic and rationality while borrowing ideas from secondary sources. It is prudent to weigh the probabilities of the assumptions made before using them in a particular learning area. The talk is inspiring to my professional life due to my passion for helping people avoid such errors. I aspire to assist officials, colleagues, and students in analyzing data logically before drawing, concluding that statistical fallacy like Sally Clark does not wish individuals' lives to be destroyed.
References
Donnelly, P. (2006). How juries are fooled by statistics . TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_donnelly_how_juries_are_fooled_by_statistics?language=en
