Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Struggle With Statistics? Your 'Fixed Mindset' Might Be To Blame (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

A new study in Frontiers in Psychology examined why people struggle so much to solve statistical problems, particularly why we show a marked preference for complicated solutions over simpler, more intuitive ones. Chalk it up to our resistance to change. From a report: The study concluded that fixed mindsets are to blame: we tend to stick with the familiar methods we learned in school, blinding us to the existence of a simpler solution. Roughly 96 percent of the general population struggles with solving problems relating to statistics and probability. Yet being a well-informed citizen in the 21st century requires us to be able to engage competently with these kinds of tasks, even if we don't encounter them in a professional setting. "As soon as you pick up a newspaper, you're confronted with so many numbers and statistics that you need to interpret correctly," says co-author Patrick Weber, a graduate student in math education at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Most of us fall far short of the mark.

Part of the problem is the counterintuitive way in which such problems are typically presented. Meadows presented his evidence in the so-called "natural frequency format" (for example, 1 in 10 people), rather than in terms of a percentage (10 percent of the population). That was a smart decision, since 1-in-10 a more intuitive, jury-friendly approach. Recent studies have shown that performance rates on many statistical tasks increased from four percent to 24 percent when the problems were presented using the natural frequency format.

10 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by dtmos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Part of the problem is the counterintuitive way in which such problems are typically presented. Meadows presented his evidence in the so-called "natural frequency format" (for example, 1 in 10 people), rather than in terms of a percentage (10 percent of the population). That was a smart decision, since 1-in-10 a more intuitive, jury-friendly approach. Recent studies have shown that performance rates on many statistical tasks increased from four percent to 24 percent when the problems were presented using the natural frequency format.

    I've heard this argument before, and I just don't get it. "Percent" means per hundred, as the word is derived from the Latin "per centum," literally, "per hundred." It's a natural frequency format, just as much as saying "1 in 10 people." It's saying "10 per 100" people. What's so confusing?!?

    1. Re:Huh? by umafuckit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've heard this argument before, and I just don't get it. "Percent" means per hundred, as the word is derived from the Latin "per centum," literally, "per hundred." It's a natural frequency format, just as much as saying "1 in 10 people." It's saying "10 per 100" people. What's so confusing?!?

      It's not confusing, it's just that many people don't do the conversion in their heads. Further, presenting the natural frequency is more useful for small percentages: e.g. 1 in 4,000 is definitely easier to digest than 0.025%

      --
      soylentnews.org
    2. Re:Huh? by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nobody is saying that 1-in-10 is mathematically different than 10%. It is heuristically more helpful to people with less mathematical competence.

      When you're good at math, you naturally line up all the "givens" in a problem. You go over each one an interpret what it means, "So that means if I had 100 people, ten of them would prefer vanilla to chocolate..." It's like a wood carver examining a block of wood to find a good place to start cutting. You do this so automatically it seems intuitive to you, but it's actually the result of long training and practice.

      To people who aren't as well trained in math, the "givens" look like an impenetrable wall of text, because the individual bricks in the wall don't instantly convey useful information to them. Well, of course they don't; you have to *think* about them, and the less accustomed you are to numbers, the more work it is for you for less certainty of reward.

      But if you put a picture into peoples' heads, you give them an immediate handhold on the problem. It's not difficult for a mathematically fluent person to make his own handhold, but it is a stumbling block for a lot of people.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    3. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Percent" means per hundred

      A lot of people don't even get that. The problem is innumeracy compounded by poor vocabulary.

    4. Re:Huh? by Calydor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You seem to be having trouble understanding that different people think in different ways.

      Would it help with a preamble saying that other people are different from you?

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    5. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because most people, especially now, have little physical grasp of numbers, beyond what they can count on their hands. Expressing numbers in ratios, rather than percentages, becomes much more meaningful when the percentage gets smaller and the numbers become indivisible by 2. 1 in 700 is much easier to grasp than 0.142%. To paraphrase George Carlin," think of how dumb the average person is, and remember that half of them are dumber than that."

    6. Re:Huh? by clovis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not confusing, it's just that many people don't do the conversion in their heads. Further, presenting the natural frequency is more useful for small percentages: e.g. 1 in 4,000 is definitely easier to digest than 0.025%

      1. What "conversion"?

      2. What makes "1 in 4,000" easier to digest than "0.025%"?

      I suppose it's because .025% is a poor choice of a way to express a value. Percent means parts of a hundred, and they make more sense when the values is between 1 and 100. When you're using percents that are far less than 1%, it is hard to get an intuitive feel for the relative size of whatever is being measured. Sure it's easy enough to do the conversion, but why not express it as a number that is scaled to the measurement in the first place.

      It's sort of like when someone asked for the height of my son. I could say he is 0.0011 mile tall, and although you may have a good feeling for how long a mile is, you have no idea whether he is average, short, or tall until you've done the conversion.

    7. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's a huge problem. Some people never actually grok'ed percent, or division, or power, or exp, or e, or phi, or differential equations, or derivates of such.. Someone could actually be a good mathematician, but still have holes in their elementary understanding. Someone could be an excellent people person and make better estimates, but nobody ever knew why everything they touched turned to gold.

      When you measure everything, you lose the value of everything.

      Captcha: circus

    8. Re:Huh? by houghi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you tell me somebody is 0.0011 km tall, the conversion is done pretty quick. You just move it 3 decimals and you have meters. The conversion is not instantly, but not a real issue either.

      A better comparison would be 100 000 seconds is how long? Is that hours, or days?

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  2. Bound for failure by reanjr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you can't figure out 10% is 1-in-10, you have no hope of wading through the standard level of obfuscation added to any publication when discussing statistics.