Look Who it Was Random video

Are we really post-truth? Flawed statistics & life | What the Physics

317 views · Published 1 December 2016 · 4:36 · Indexed 4 October 2026

Channel: Martin Archer · 2016 · Science & Technology

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The Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year for 2016 is post-truth (or as Stephen Colbert calls it, truthiness). But are we really dismissive of facts or are we still pre-post-truth but our lives are simply based around flawed statistics?

W: http://www.martinarcher.co.uk
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00:40 Some thoughts on stats
01:03 Sampling bias, non-random & representative samples
01:50 Emphasis on outliers
02:30 Error analysis, confidence intervals, p-values
03:18 What can we do?


Links for more information

Sampling Methods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)
https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat100/node/18

Sampling & Selection Bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

Outliers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier

Robust Statistics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_statistics
http://www.rsc.org/images/robust-statistics-technical-brief-6_tcm18-214850.pdf

Error Analysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval
http://stattrek.com/estimation/confidence-interval.aspx


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