More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding

wow, more than half..

Stats is one of those subjects which displays the dunning kruger effect really well.

Sure on the surface stuffile averages, medians, standard deviations etc are quite easy but the moment you start going deeper you realize how difficult and un-intuitive things start to get.

I'm still in the valley of despair, and frankly it's probably the best place to be in for the average person. Understand the basics and know just enough to realize how easy it is to mislead people with it.

Ratan

[dead]

Things change with time.

Back in the 70's I used to walk 20 miles as a child, and then go for farm work (not eveyday). As a mining engineer, I used to walk up 1.5 miles along a 1:3 incline (tunnel) everyday, sometimes during midnight, working 6-day week. Worked in dirtiest, noisy coal mines, near blast sites, soaked in black dust, with no place to sit during the shift. But never felt that it's something hard or bad, until some college kids, for who I was a tour guide, told me in horror that they wouldn't ever venture working in such place.

My boss laughs at that. He receives anonymous red-letter notes from the local extremist organization threatening him. He keeps a pile of those notes on a spike.