Why you should love statistics | Alan Smith

Summary

The speaker discusses the UK government's alarming discovery in 2003 that nearly half of working-age adults lacked basic numeracy skills, a problem that persisted in 2011. They highlight that numeracy is not just an English issue, with the USA and other OECD countries also struggling. The speaker challenges the notion that people are either good with numbers or not, advocating for the inspiration that numbers can provide. They share their experience with statistics, which, despite its image problem, is powerful when it surprises us, and introduces a quiz designed to engage people with local census data, showing how even those proficient in numbers can be surprised by statistics.

Takeaways

• 📊 The UK government was alarmed to find in 2003 that nearly half of working-age adults lacked basic numeracy skills, and surprisingly, the number increased to 49% in 2011.
• 🌍 Numeracy issues are not unique to the UK; the USA and seven other OECD countries have over 20% of young people with low numeracy skills.
• 🤔 The speaker challenges the common dichotomy that there are only two types of people: those who are comfortable with numbers and those who are not.
• 📈 Statistics, despite having an image problem, are powerful when they reveal surprising insights about how we as a group relate to our community.
• 😮 There is a significant gap between public perception and reality, as shown by surveys conducted by Ipsos MORI, indicating a widespread misperception of demographic facts.
• 🧐 People are generally poor intuitive statisticians, influenced by individual experiences and media reporting, which often focuses on exceptions rather than the norm.
• 📚 Daniel Kahneman's research highlights the human tendency to be blind to the obvious and to our own blindness, which can have serious implications for decision-making.
• 🌐 The speaker's quiz, designed to gauge local area knowledge, uses a visual method of representing numbers inspired by Otto Neurath's isotypes, making it accessible to a wide audience.
• 🎯 The quiz's gamification of data and use of animation to reveal the gap between perception and reality sparked widespread public engagement and discussion.
• 😄 Even people who are good with numbers, such as the national statistician of England and Wales, can be surprised by the quiz's results, showing that numbers can inspire and surprise everyone.
• 📉 The speaker concludes that statistics are not just the science of uncertainty but the science of us, emphasizing the importance of being fascinated by numbers.

Q & A

What was the purpose of the UK government's survey conducted in 2003?

The survey was conducted to measure levels of numeracy in the population and was particularly focused on assessing the ability of adults to deal with fractions, percentages, and decimals.

What was the shocking finding from the 2003 numeracy survey in the UK?

The survey revealed that for every 100 working-age adults in the UK, 47 lacked Level 1 numeracy skills, which is equivalent to a low-end GCSE score.

How did the UK government respond to the findings of the 2003 numeracy survey?

The government responded by changing policies and making investments to improve numeracy skills, which led to the survey being conducted again in 2011.

What was the outcome of the numeracy survey when it was repeated in 2011?

Surprisingly, the number of adults lacking Level 1 numeracy skills increased slightly from 47 to 49 percent.

What is the significance of the humor in the script regarding the numeracy survey results?

The humor serves to highlight the gravity of the numeracy issue in a light-hearted way, making the audience more receptive to the discussion of a serious problem.

What is the speaker's stance on the categorization of people into two groups based on their comfort with numbers?

The speaker believes that this categorization is a false dichotomy and that it's not an immutable pairing, suggesting that one does not need to have high levels of numeracy to be inspired by numbers.

What is the speaker's opinion on the role of statistics in our lives?

The speaker believes that statistics are important because they are about us as a group and as social animals, we have a fascination with how we relate to our groups and peers.

Why does the speaker think statistics can be powerful?

Statistics can be powerful when they surprise us, revealing a disconnect between our perceptions and the reality as given by the data.

What is the discrepancy between public perception and official figures in the Ipsos MORI survey about the Muslim population in England and Wales?

The public perception was that 24 out of every 100 people in England and Wales are Muslim, while the official figures reveal that the actual number is about five.

What is the purpose of the 'How well do you know your area?' quiz mentioned in the script?

The quiz aims to engage people with local census data in a fun and interactive way, using gamification and animation to reveal misconceptions about their local area.

What was the public's reaction to the 'How well do you know your area?' quiz?

The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with a quarter of a million people playing the quiz within 48 hours of its launch, sparking discussions on social media and even being shared with politicians.

What is the final message the speaker wants to convey about statistics?

The speaker's final message is that statistics should not be seen as the science of uncertainty but rather as the science of us, emphasizing that everyone can be fascinated and surprised by numbers.

Outlines

00:00

📊 Numeracy Crisis and the Importance of Statistics

The speaker begins by highlighting the UK government's shock in 2003 upon discovering that nearly half of the working-age adults lacked basic numeracy skills. Despite policy changes and investments, the situation worsened slightly by 2011. The issue is not confined to the UK, as OECD figures show high percentages of young people with low numeracy in several countries, including the USA. The speaker emphasizes the need for comfort with numbers in the 21st century and challenges the notion that people are either good with numbers or not, advocating for the inspiration that numbers can provide to everyone. The introduction of statistics as a tool for understanding our collective state is presented, despite its reputation for uncertainty and lack of precision compared to other mathematical fields.

05:04

🌐 Perception vs. Reality: Global Numeracy and Misconceptions

This paragraph delves into the gap between public perception and statistical reality, using surveys conducted by Ipsos MORI as examples. The surveys reveal significant misperceptions about demographics, such as the percentage of Muslims in the UK and the number of teenage pregnancies. The speaker discusses the extension of these surveys globally, showing similar discrepancies in countries like Saudi Arabia and Japan. The causes of these misconceptions are attributed to individual experiences and media reporting, which often focuses on exceptions rather than norms. The speaker also references the work of Daniel Kahneman, emphasizing the human tendency to be poor intuitive statisticians and the potential impact of this on decision-making.

10:04

🎯 Localizing Statistics: A Quiz to Bridge the Knowledge Gap

The speaker introduces an innovative approach to engaging the public with statistical data through a local area quiz, which uses census data to ask questions about one's own area. The quiz is designed to be accessible, using isotype methods to represent numbers visually, avoiding complex numerical terms. The speaker shares personal anecdotes of using the quiz, highlighting the difficulty of estimating local statistics accurately. The success of the quiz is evident in its ability to attract significant public engagement, even causing the statistics website to crash due to high traffic. The speaker concludes by reflecting on the potential of statistics to inspire and surprise everyone, regardless of their initial comfort with numbers.

Keywords

💡Numeracy

Numeracy refers to the ability to understand and work with numbers. In the video, it is a central theme highlighting that a significant portion of the UK population lacks basic numeracy skills, such as dealing with fractions, percentages, and decimals. The script discusses the government's survey revealing that nearly half of the working-age adults lacked Level 1 numeracy skills, indicating a need for improvement in numeracy education.

💡Level 1 Numeracy Skills

Level 1 Numeracy Skills is a term used to describe a basic level of numerical understanding, typically associated with a low-end GCSE score. The script uses this term to emphasize the low numeracy levels found in the UK survey, suggesting that even fundamental numerical competencies are not widespread.

💡OECD

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) is an international organization that provides statistics and research on various topics, including education. In the script, OECD figures are mentioned to compare numeracy levels among young people in different countries, showing that poor numeracy is not just an English problem but a global concern.

💡Statistics

Statistics in the video is portrayed as a field of study that deals with the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data. The speaker discusses how statistics, despite having an image problem, are crucial for understanding societal trends and individual perceptions. Statistics are highlighted as a means to reveal surprising insights about our communities.

💡Ipsos MORI

Ipsos MORI is a UK-based research institute known for conducting surveys and providing insights into public opinion. In the script, Ipsos MORI is referenced for conducting surveys that reveal the gap between public perceptions and actual statistics, such as the overestimation of the Muslim population in England and Wales.

💡Perception vs. Reality

The concept of perception versus reality is a key point in the video, where the speaker discusses how people's perceptions of certain societal metrics often differ significantly from the reality presented by official statistics. This discrepancy is used to illustrate the power of statistics to surprise and the need for better numeracy to interpret them accurately.

💡Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel-winning economist and psychologist known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making. The script mentions Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky's research on the gap between perception and reality, emphasizing the human tendency to be poor intuitive statisticians.

💡Misperception

Misperception in the video refers to the incorrect understanding or belief about a particular fact or situation. The speaker uses examples from surveys to show how common misperceptions are, such as vastly overestimating the number of teenage pregnancies or the proportion of the population that is Muslim.

💡Gamification

Gamification is the application of game-design elements and principles in non-game contexts to increase engagement and motivation. The speaker describes creating a quiz based on local census data, using gamification to make statistics more accessible and engaging for a wider audience.

💡Isotypes

Isotypes, short for International System of Typographic Picture Education, are a method of representing data using pictograms or icons. In the script, the speaker mentions being inspired by Otto Neurath's isotypes to design the quiz, using repeating icons to represent quantities without complex numerical terms.

💡Census Data

Census data refers to the information collected through a census, which is a systematic method of obtaining demographic and statistical data relating to a population. The speaker's quiz is based on census data, using it to ask questions about local areas and reveal how well people know their communities.

Highlights

In 2003, a UK government survey revealed that 47 out of every 100 working-age adults lacked Level 1 numeracy skills.

Level 1 numeracy skills refer to the ability to handle fractions, percentages, and decimals, which are essential for daily life.

Despite policy changes and investments, the numeracy skills of the UK population worsened slightly, increasing to 49% in 2011.

The speaker humorously notes that the lack of numeracy skills is so pervasive that even the person who reported the survey results might lack these skills.

Numeracy problems are not unique to the UK; the USA and seven other OECD countries have more than 20% of young people with low numeracy.

The Netherlands and Korea have significantly lower rates of numeracy issues, suggesting that improvement is possible.

The speaker argues against the dichotomy that there are only two types of people: those who are good with numbers and those who are not.

Statistics, despite having an image problem, are powerful tools for understanding our communities and can inspire anyone.

The speaker's personal journey from disliking statistics to finding them fascinating demonstrates the potential for change in perceptions.

Statistics can reveal surprising insights about our perceptions versus reality, as shown by the Ipsos MORI surveys.

There is a significant gap between public perception and actual statistics regarding the Muslim population in England and Wales.

Misperceptions about societal issues like teenage pregnancy rates are common and can be addressed through engaging with statistics.

The speaker created an interactive quiz to engage people with local statistics and reveal their misconceptions.

The quiz uses isotype methods to represent numbers visually, making statistics accessible to a wider audience.

The quiz's popularity and its ability to spark discussions about misconceptions demonstrate the power of gamifying data.

Even those proficient in numeracy can have misconceptions about statistics, as shown by the quiz scores of experts.

The speaker concludes that statistics are the science of 'us' and should be a source of fascination, not just uncertainty.

Transcripts

Back in 2003,

the UK government carried out a survey.

And it was a survey that measured levels of numeracy

in the population.

And they were shocked to find out

that for every 100 working age adults in the country,

47 of them lacked Level 1 numeracy skills.

Now, Level 1 numeracy skills -- that's low-end GCSE score.

It's the ability to deal with fractions, percentages and decimals.

So this figure prompted a lot of hand-wringing in Whitehall.

Policies were changed,

investments were made,

and then they ran the survey again in 2011.

So can you guess what happened to this number?

It went up to 49.

(Laughter)

And in fact, when I reported this figure in the FT,

one of our readers joked and said,

"This figure is only shocking to 51 percent of the population."

(Laughter)

But I preferred, actually, the reaction of a schoolchild

when I presented at a school this information,

who raised their hand and said,

"How do we know that the person who made that number

isn't one of the 49 percent either?"

(Laughter)

So clearly, there's a numeracy issue,

because these are important skills for life,

and a lot of the changes that we want to introduce in this century

involve us becoming more comfortable with numbers.

Now, it's not just an English problem.

OECD this year released some figures looking at numeracy in young people,

and leading the way, the USA --

nearly 40 percent of young people in the US have low numeracy.

Now, England is there too,

but there are seven OECD countries with figures above 20 percent.

That is a problem, because it doesn't have to be that way.

If you look at the far end of this graph,

you can see the Netherlands and Korea are in single figures.

So there's definitely a numeracy problem that we want to address.

Now, as useful as studies like these are,

I think we risk herding people inadvertently into one of two categories;

that there are two kinds of people:

those people that are comfortable with numbers, that can do numbers,

and the people who can't.

And what I'm trying to talk about here today

is to say that I believe that is a false dichotomy.

It's not an immutable pairing.

I think you don't have to have tremendously high levels of numeracy

to be inspired by numbers,

and that should be the starting point to the journey ahead.

And one of the ways in which we can begin that journey, for me,

is looking at statistics.

Now, I am the first to acknowledge that statistics has got somewhat

of an image problem.

(Laughter)

It's the part of mathematics

that even mathematicians don't particularly like,

because whereas the rest of maths is all about precision and certainty,

statistics is almost the reverse of that.

But actually, I was a late convert to the world of statistics myself.

If you'd asked my undergraduate professors

what two subjects would I be least likely to excel in after university,

they'd have told you statistics and computer programming,

and yet here I am, about to show you some statistical graphics

that I programmed.

So what inspired that change in me?

What made me think that statistics was actually an interesting thing?

It's really because statistics are about us.

If you look at the etymology of the word statistics,

it's the science of dealing with data

about the state or the community that we live in.

So statistics are about us as a group,

not us as individuals.

And I think as social animals,

we share this fascination about how we as individuals relate to our groups,

to our peers.

And statistics in this way are at their most powerful

when they surprise us.

And there's been some really wonderful surveys carried out recently

by Ipsos MORI in the last few years.

They did a survey of over 1,000 adults in the UK,

and said, for every 100 people in England and Wales,

how many of them are Muslim?

Now the average answer from this survey,

which was supposed to be representative of the total population, was 24.

That's what people thought.

British people think 24 out of every 100 people in the country are Muslim.

Now, official figures reveal that figure to be about five.

So there's this big variation between what we think, our perception,

and the reality as given by statistics.

And I think that's interesting.

What could possibly be causing that misperception?

And I was so thrilled with this study,

I started to take questions out in presentations. I was referring to it.

Now, I did a presentation

at St. Paul's School for Girls in Hammersmith,

and I had an audience rather like this,

except it was comprised entirely of sixth-form girls.

And I said, "Girls,

how many teenage girls do you think the British public think

get pregnant every year?"

And the girls were apoplectic when I said

the British public think that 15 out of every 100 teenage girls

get pregnant in the year.

And they had every right to be angry,

because in fact, I'd have to have closer to 200 dots

before I could color one in,

in terms of what the official figures tell us.

And rather like numeracy, this is not just an English problem.

Ipsos MORI expanded the survey in recent years to go across the world.

And so, they asked Saudi Arabians,

for every 100 adults in your country,

how many of them are overweight or obese?

And the average answer from the Saudis was just over a quarter.

That's what they thought.

Just over a quarter of adults are overweight or obese.

The official figures show, actually, it's nearer to three-quarters.

(Laughter)

So again, a big variation.

And I love this one: they asked in Japan, they asked the Japanese,

for every 100 Japanese people,

how many of them live in rural areas?

The average was about a 50-50 split, just over halfway.

They thought 56 out of every 100 Japanese people lived in rural areas.

The official figure is seven.

So extraordinary variations, and surprising to some,

but not surprising to people who have read the work

of Daniel Kahneman, for example, the Nobel-winning economist.

He and his colleague, Amos Tversky, spent years researching this disjoint

between what people perceive and the reality,

the fact that people are actually pretty poor intuitive statisticians.

And there are many reasons for this.

Individual experiences, certainly, can influence our perceptions,

but so, too, can things like the media reporting things by exception,

rather than what's normal.

Kahneman had a nice way of referring to that.

He said, "We can be blind to the obvious" --

so we've got the numbers wrong --

"but we can be blind to our blindness about it."

And that has enormous repercussions for decision making.

So at the statistics office while this was all going on,

I thought this was really interesting.

I said, this is clearly a global problem,

but maybe geography is the issue here.

These were questions that were all about, how well do you know your country?

So in this case, it's how well do you know 64 million people?

Not very well, it turns out. I can't do that.

So I had an idea,

which was to think about this same sort of approach

but to think about it in a very local sense.

Is this a local?

If we reframe the questions and say,

how well do you know your local area,

would your answers be any more accurate?

So I devised a quiz:

How well do you know your area?

It's a simple Web app.

You put in a post code

and then it will ask you questions based on census data

for your local area.

And I was very conscious in designing this.

I wanted to make it open to the widest possible range of people,

not just the 49 percent who can get the numbers.

I wanted everyone to engage with it.

So for the design of the quiz,

I was inspired by the isotypes

of Otto Neurath from the 1920s and '30s.

Now, these are methods for representing numbers

using repeating icons.

And the numbers are there, but they sit in the background.

So it's a great way of representing quantity

without resorting to using terms like "percentage,"

"fractions" and "ratios."

So here's the quiz.

The layout of the quiz is,

you have your repeating icons on the left-hand side there,

and a map showing you the area we're asking you questions about

on the right-hand side.

There are seven questions.

Each question, there's a possible answer between zero and a hundred,

and at the end of the quiz,

you get an overall score between zero and a hundred.

And so because this is TEDxExeter,

I thought we would have a quick look at the quiz

for the first few questions of Exeter.

And so the first question is:

For every 100 people, how many are aged under 16?

Now, I don't know Exeter very well at all, so I had a guess at this,

but it gives you an idea of how this quiz works.

You drag the slider to highlight your icons,

and then just click "Submit" to answer,

and we animate away the difference between your answer and reality.

And it turns out, I was a pretty terrible guess: five.

How about the next question?

This is asking about what the average age is,

so the age at which half the population are younger

and half the population are older.

And I thought 35 -- that sounds middle-aged to me.

(Laughter)

Actually, in Exeter, it's incredibly young,

and I had underestimated the impact of the university in this area.

The questions get harder as you go through.

So this one's now asking about homeownership:

For every 100 households, how many are owned with a mortgage or loan?

And I hedged my bets here,

because I didn't want to be more than 50 out on the answer.

(Laughter)

And actually, these get harder, these questions,

because when you're in an area, when you're in a community,

things like age -- there are clues to whether a population is old or young.

Just by looking around the area, you can see it.

Something like homeownership is much more difficult to see,

so we revert to our own heuristics,

our own biases about how many people we think own their own homes.

Now the truth is, when we published this quiz,

the census data that it's based on was already a few years old.

We've had online applications that allow you to put in a post code

and get statistics back for years.

So in some senses,

this was all a little bit old and not necessarily new.

But I was interested to see what reaction we might get

by gamifying the data in the way that we have,

by using animation

and playing on the fact that people have their own preconceptions.

It turns out, the reaction was, um ...

was more than I could have hoped for.

It was a long-held ambition of mine to bring down a statistics website

due to public demand.

(Laughter)

This URL contains the words "statistics," "gov" and "UK,"

which are three of people's least favorite words in a URL.

And the amazing thing about this was that the website came down

at quarter to 10 at night,

because people were actually engaging with this data

of their own free will,

using their own personal time.

I was very interested to see

that we got something like a quarter of a million people

playing the quiz within the space of 48 hours of launching it.

And it sparked an enormous discussion online, on social media,

which was largely dominated

by people having fun with their misconceptions,

which is something that I couldn't have hoped for any better,

in some respects.

I also liked the fact that people started sending it to politicians.

How well do you know the area you claim to represent?

(Laughter)

And then just to finish,

going back to the two kinds of people,

I thought it would be really interesting to see

how people who are good with numbers would do on this quiz.

The national statistician of England and Wales, John Pullinger,

you would expect he would be pretty good.

He got 44 for his own area.

(Laughter)

Jeremy Paxman -- admittedly, after a glass of wine -- 36.

Even worse.

It just shows you that the numbers can inspire us all.

They can surprise us all.

So very often, we talk about statistics

as being the science of uncertainty.

My parting thought for today is:

actually, statistics is the science of us.

And that's why we should be fascinated by numbers.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)