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

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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.

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Just thought I'd bring up the false positive rate problem again - as it related to Ebola.

Given that the false positive rate for a certain rapid test is 3 in 1000

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One major issue with this kind of rapid-testing quarantine is the phenomenon of false positives. But P.C.R.-based testing for Ebola has a low false-positive rate (three per 1,000), and its accuracy could be further improved by focusing on patients who come from particular geographic regions or by using more refined questionnaires.

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LINK

I would say we should only be testing planes from countries with active ebola outbreaks, where the incidence rate exceeds 3 per 1000. Otherwise, most of the folks we isolate for the disease won't actually have it.