Starting to deal with Statistics
September 9th 2007 19:50
As part of the job I go back to in December, I’m going to have to deal more with statistics than I have before. In line with this I went to Borders bookshop in Norwich today to see if they had a copy of Statistics for Dummies, and they had at least two. I nearly got a different book but the SfD looked more interestingly laid out. This should give me a bit of a foot up in the world of stats – enough to deal with the sort of material I’m likely to encounter.
I already have a fairly skeptical view of most of the statistics that get thrown out at us every day, and often look at them with a quizzical eye, wondering whether the writers have actually the information right, or whether the researchers did their job accurately.
Apropos of this, I was just reading a report on the number of car accidents that happen in the wider New York City area every year. It said: In 2005, there were more than 225,000 motor vehicle accidents resulting in more than 1,300 traffic fatalities in the state of New York.
It goes on: In 2004, there were nearly 25,000 car accidents in Manhattan, and about 70 of those resulted in fatalities. Fully half of all accidents in the state occurred in New York City – which includes Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx.
1,300 fatalities sounds like an enormous number, until you get the calculator out. It works out that only in .006 percent of the motor vehicle accidents was there a fatality. Of course, we have to take the human factor into it: 1,300 deaths is awful in terms of the families involved and the lives wrecked. Maybe it would be more effective to say that there were more than three deaths a day from accidents. For me that puts it in better perspective.
And the percentage of fatalities in the 25,000 car accidents in Manhattan is a ‘mere’ .0028 percent. About one every five days.
But one every five days (let alone three every day in the other statistic) is still enough to keep a heap of specialist New York car accident lawyers in business. Which is why there are so many, no doubt!
I already have a fairly skeptical view of most of the statistics that get thrown out at us every day, and often look at them with a quizzical eye, wondering whether the writers have actually the information right, or whether the researchers did their job accurately.
Apropos of this, I was just reading a report on the number of car accidents that happen in the wider New York City area every year. It said: In 2005, there were more than 225,000 motor vehicle accidents resulting in more than 1,300 traffic fatalities in the state of New York.
It goes on: In 2004, there were nearly 25,000 car accidents in Manhattan, and about 70 of those resulted in fatalities. Fully half of all accidents in the state occurred in New York City – which includes Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx.
1,300 fatalities sounds like an enormous number, until you get the calculator out. It works out that only in .006 percent of the motor vehicle accidents was there a fatality. Of course, we have to take the human factor into it: 1,300 deaths is awful in terms of the families involved and the lives wrecked. Maybe it would be more effective to say that there were more than three deaths a day from accidents. For me that puts it in better perspective.
And the percentage of fatalities in the 25,000 car accidents in Manhattan is a ‘mere’ .0028 percent. About one every five days.
But one every five days (let alone three every day in the other statistic) is still enough to keep a heap of specialist New York car accident lawyers in business. Which is why there are so many, no doubt!
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