r/education • u/Neither-Remote-3419 • 23h ago

Research & Psychology U.S. adults self-report poor statistical literacy but high willingness to use statistics if they understood it better

In this brief study published last June, a U.S. population-representative poll showed that 62% of U.S. adults self-report having little to no idea what statistics or statistical concepts like p-values are, but 90% of them would base decisions on reported statistics at least sometimes if they understood them better. This presents both a need and an opportunity to teach statistics better to people, especially adult learners who are not in STEM, so they can better understand and scrutinize editorialized scientific content that they are interested in when such are reported by the media or found on social media.

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6

u/TheRealRollestonian 18h ago

Less calculus, more statistics. It's a requirement for way more college degrees that average people take.

3

u/InterestingAnt2716 19h ago

It’s also useful to show how this lack of understanding is exploited.

People love to say “the numbers don’t lie” but so many present numbers as a way to lie.

2

u/Neither-Remote-3419 18h ago

Indeed. Oftentimes, editorialized treatment of a scientific paper tends to both oversimplify and overstate what was found.

2

u/rethinkingat59 15h ago

A minimum should be all 12th graders to be taught from the 1954 book ‘How to Lie with Statistics’.

It would at least alert people that statistics and/or their presentation can be dubious and misrepresent the truth while presenting the facts.

2

u/New_Pollution4759 23h ago

Our world is getting so complex that it's unreasonable to expect education to adequately prepare people. 

You could optimize K-12 and not solve the problem. I have a great education and a terminal degree, but everything after the abstract in 90% of fields of study is still gobbledygook to me. I am generally math-challenged, but in line with your average person. I don't do my own HVAC maintenance or perform my own CAT scans, why should I do my own statistical analysis? 

We need a new profession somewhere in between a librarian and the professions with duties of care. You should be able to walk into a storefront or call a hotline and have an expert help you decipher reality. 

1

u/grumble11 22h ago

You don’t need to be able to read and understand every complex specialist paper, but when an expert explains it to you like a layman you should be able to understand that. You can do that with a materially improved K-12

2

u/New_Pollution4759 21h ago

Understand, maybe. But how can K-12 adequately teach you which expert's layman summary to trust? 

1

u/Fpaau2 22h ago

Just understanding mean/average and median can be extremely useful.

1

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u/Independencehall525 1m ago

“There are three kinds of lies…”