For anyone reading this so far, thanks for taking the time to 🙂 This is my first attempt at a blog…. ever…. let alone one for an assignment…! I’m not exactly the most technologically gifted person so here goes nothing…
The most straightforward and obvious answer to the question in the title of this blog is yes. Having a strong statistical background not only allows you to back up your arguments in essays and important documents with statistical evidence that you can immediately understand, but also in every day life such as advertisements where companies make claims about their products.
Having a strong statistical background is a benefit most obviously because it tends to make life easier when dealing with maths and interpreting results from psychological studies, like we and many others have to do at university. It takes less time to complete an assignment when you can actually understand what it’s on about!
Another benefit of having a strong statistical background is that you are not sucked in by cleverly worded statistics in advertisements. For the majority of the people who don’t have a strong statistical background, seeing a statement such as ‘60% of women thought this was a good idea’ (this is a fictitious statement I just made up) would think the idea was a good one and tend to go along with it. However – in an extreme case – this statistic could potentially mean that only 3 out of the 5 women who were asked thought that it was a good idea. To those with statistical knowledge, this is glaringly obvious as not being nearly as convincing a piece of evidence as if say 1,000,000 women were asked, and out of them 600,000 thought it was a good idea. Technically, both examples have a 60% agreement but having a strong statistical background makes it obvious how easily it is to be duped by such figures without looking at the details such as sample size.
So yes, there are benefits for being a statistics geek 🙂 I think so anyways… but what do youuuu think?
suuzblog 
Oct 05, 2011 @ 13:14:59
I enjoyed reading your blog, I thought the first and last paragraphs were very funny (especially the last one!)
The one thing I thought that you could have done was to find a real example of statistics in the real world instead of just making it up. Having said that, I thought that you explained your point really clearly
Also, I think that it would have been nice if you had written a bit about why perhaps not always a strong statistical background is helpful, for example, statistics can’t tell you why things have happened, like a person’s behaviour for instance.
Overall though, I thought that your blog demonstrated your opinion well
Oct 05, 2011 @ 14:20:31
hello, your blog was very amusing to read, it was clearly written and your argument and opinion were obvious. I liked how you applied the question to the proffesional world as well as just advertising, i think it may have been helpful to have develped the academic side of your argument a little further though. you did not touch on why maybe you dont need a statisitcal background? Such as areas of work or jobs where it is not really necassary, as areas like these still need to be around for people who struggle with maths. Thats getting into my opinion though! your blog demonstrated your opinion well.
Oct 05, 2011 @ 16:33:43
I agree with the 2 previous comments – your blog is very easy to read and follow, which is clearly a good thing. I really liked how you used and explained the examples even though they weren’t real. I do agree with your opinion on how important is statistics in everyday life. You could’ve added a little bit of academic importance of statistics, but overall it is a very well presented point of view!
Oct 05, 2011 @ 17:15:35
hey, the blog’s really good, you’ve injected a lot of your personality into the post, which makes it a good read. You give a really good example of how stats could be used to mislead people into thinking something is better than it actually is. The post shows the importance of analysing data in many ways instead of just using the basics. A strong statistical backing would give people a range of information which be correct and accurate. I totally agree that there is a benefit to using stats as well. In all a really good first blog 🙂
Oct 06, 2011 @ 07:47:42
I like the fact that you’ve included how media can make warped statistics, but how if the sample size was just improved the statistic would actually be great. Understanding statistics in data is definitely a massive bonus and I agree that this isn’t where it should end. As sticking a load of numbers into a research project (p=…, se=…) would be a bit pointless if you couldn’t then analyse what those numbers actually mean to your study. Plus a great advantage to doing statistics is you get credited that your evidence has scientific support and isn’t just making assumptions, cause since psychology is now classed as a form of science we must seem scientific! The only thing I disagree with slightly is making it easier, it makes it easier it terms of analysis, but working out the statistics themselves sometimes can be hard especially if you choose a complex design (but then again I guess that makes it the researcher’s fault for being to overly complex 🙂 )
Oct 07, 2011 @ 12:52:01
hey i really enjoyed reading your blog, it was nice seeing a nice chatty style compared to some of the other blogs that can come across very rigid and formal. I completely agree with everything you said, many stats presented to the public can have very limited samples, which is shown in cosmetics adverts when the sample size is shown at the bottom of the screen is normally less than 100 partiucipants. I think it would have been good to see a couple of real life examples but your personal examples put your point across very well!
Keep up the good work
Oct 07, 2011 @ 17:31:56
Your friendly approach to this blog is exactly how a blog should be written, an enjoyable read. It’s concerning how many people would look at a statistic of, for example, 20/100 people agree, and would think that this is a great stat, and this that the product would be a great buy; even though results aren’t guaranteed. I suppose that’s the beauty of knowing stats (even though it is dull, complicated and generally a pain), at least we have more of an understanding of the world around us. That leads onto the question of should we have more statistics within psychology, and less within the media? If we had more statistics surely a study would be more scientific? On the other hand, more stats would confuse everyone (especially me).
Once again, loved the blog.
Toby
Oct 07, 2011 @ 19:41:51
i enjoyed reading your blog it was really funny! but dont you think sometimes statistics are unusable in some parts of psychology? for example it would be hard to test many of Freuds theories in an actual experiment, although Freuds theories would all be more relevant today if they were supported by real evidence though! But statistics can be massivly misleading as your said, and understanding statistics is important so you dont get lead astray by their results. This is why as psychologists we need to try and have just one example of statistics.