re: "Half the schools are below average" - not always true

quote:

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Actually, your OP shows that Tyson doesn't understand averages. The response he's going for in his speeches is "Of course half are below average, duh!".

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If that is indeed true - then you are correct.

In fact statistics may be the most widely misunderstood concept amongst the educated professions (scientists, doctors, etc).

Nassim Taleb makes a point of this in his book "Fooled by Randomness".

Here's a good example he gives for how doctors don't understand statistics:

Given
A) that the false positive rate for a given test for a disease is 1% - and -
B) that the known rate of that disease in the population is 0.1%
EDIT - C) there are NO false negatives

What are the chances that a patient who tests positively for the disease actually has it?


According to Taleb (I forget if he cites a source or not) - doctors will give the wrong answer almost every time.