-
Why Stories Circulate about Covid-19 Deaths
I’ve seen several posts on Facebook claiming that deaths of relatives or friends have been falsely attributed to covid-19 when in fact they were due to some other cause. These anecdotes represent a misunderstanding of the way statistics work and how data for statistics is collected. Of course, researchers want as accurate a count as…
-
Meaningless Statistics
Once again the Minnesota Department of Transportation is putting the word out that drunk drivers cause 1 in 4 traffic deaths. I begin with this example of a meaningless statistic, not because it is especially egregious, but because it exemplifies what makes statistics meaningless. Of course, it is not entirely meaningless. We all have a…