Yesterday I had to take a small quiz on stats in my psych critical thinking class. Then we discussed how people use stats to influence people. One of the things we discussed was tooth paste. I remember seeing ads that say something like “63% of dentist recommend this tooth paste”. When you hear that you think wow it must be good if 63% of dentist recommend it. But really that is like 5 out of 7. You also have to think about who they are asking. Are these dentist that get this product for free? Also did they only ask 7 people?
I think that from now on whenever I hear an ad that talks about stats I will have to listen to them a little better.
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