Sunday, August 16, 2015

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics?


A li'l statistics lesson passed along by K.C. Cole in "The Universe and the Teacup":
"In "Strength In Numbers," mathematician Sherman Stein offers the case of the men's support group that wanted to demonstrate how badly women treat the male sex. As supporting evidence, the group pointed out that more than half of the women on death row had murdered their husbands, while only a third of the men on death row had murdered their wives. What the group neglected to mention, says Stein, was that there were a total of seven women on death row. And 2,400 men."

....and on a related note, see my review of Gary Smith's "Standard Deviations" newly up at MathTango.


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