Statistics incorporates uncertainty, are not exact mathematics

In the framework of Science Week, on 28 November, Dr. Xavier Basagaña, CREAL researcher, gave the workshop "How to Survive a scientific statistics" at the College of Journalists of Catalonia. During the event, he explained how statistics help researchers in developing research and interpret their results as well as how journalists can avoid misinterpretations.

According Basagaña, "the chance is always in real life and it can affect our experiments. Statistics incorporates uncertainty. This doesn’t means that there are exact mathematical models. The average is accompanied by a confidence value to know what happens in 95% cases.”

The CREAL researcher will also explained examples of erroneous graphics, holding to misinterpret the data. “A graphic example of evil is to present the results with a graph of cakes in three dimensions, since the visual proportion is lost."

The event was organized by the Catalan Association of Scientific Communication (ACCC) and CREAL, an ISGlobal research centre.

If you are interested in consult the presentation, click here.

Source: Raúl Torán