From the course: Everyday Statistics, with Eddie Davila

The statistics of everyday life

- [Eddie] The world wants answers. For example, you have tickets to a sporting event on Saturday. You need to plan it out. Naturally, you have some questions and naturally, you want answers. What's the fastest route to the stadium? What will the weather be on game day? Who is the best player on each team? Who is likely to win the game? How would you get the answers to those questions? Sure, you might Google them, but how does the internet come to provide you those answers? To find you those answers, industry professionals, analysts and prognosticators utilize statistics. Statistics are now integrated into everything we do. We use them to make good decisions in the present, to analyze the past, to predict the future. Statistics help us understand our society and universe and often our competitive nature will drive us to use stats to win arguments. In this weekly series, I'll uncover some of the basic elements and quirks of statistics. Think about this stat. 85% of people that drink milk get into car accidents. How is that number calculated? Where did that data come from? Is that statistic important? If so, what does that mean? Does drinking milk actually cause car accidents? I'll show you how to answer those questions and what those answers mean in the real world. I want this to be both fun and interesting. We'll poke holes in bad stats. We'll shine light on good ones. Take the rest of today and listen to the conversations you have. Consider the content you read, listen to and watch. Consider the decisions you make. Did you know there's a 95.67% chance that statistics really are a part of everything you do? Is that a stat you can trust? Hi, my name is Eddie Davila. Stick with my weekly series and you'll learn how to decode the statistics served to you on a daily basis.

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