Lies, Damn Lies...

...and Statistics. I was working on my stats assignment today, and I enjoyed one of the questions. So much did I enjoy it, I decided to share it with you.

1. What does the confidence interval tell you? HINT: I want you to explain it in words as though you were telling a 15 year old niece what it means. It might help to think of political polls and the kind of information we are given about the results.

Well sweetie… a confidence interval tells us how sure we are that our answer is right. For example, you and your friends think that Frankie is about an 8 on the hotness scale. Some of you say 7, some of you say 9... but on average, he's an 8.We might say that we’re 95% sure (pretty darn sure!) that all the girls in your school think Frankie rates between a 7.5 and an 8.5. It’s telling us how sure we are that the number from your friends (our sample) represents the number that all the girls in your school (the population) would choose.

What I find especially enjoyable about this question is the assumption that you would use political polls to explain confidence intervals to a 15 year old girl.... I felt my interpretation was somewhat more relevant. ;)

Other than that and the fact that my carrots in my lunch were sweet today (not bitter, as they sometimes are) today sucked. I won't go into the suckitude, but suffice it to say that I'm exhausted, overwhelmed, and cranky. I wouldn't advise approaching me unless you're waving a large bar of chocolate in front of you like a white flag. Then I promise I won't be cranky. Just sullen and silent as I inhale your chocolate. I need to go for a run and work off some stress... bye for now!!

E.