10 Everyday Reasons Why Statistics Are Important

[Chara Dagres]

Statistics are important because they help people make informed decisions. Governments, organizations, and businesses all collect statistics to help them track progress, measure performance, analyze problems, and prioritize. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau collects information from people about where they live and their age. This information can help cities decide where they should build a new hospital if they find that there is a high elderly population in an area or a new school, if they find there are many families with young children.

On a personal level, statistics can be a great way to enhance your argument in a research paper or presentation. They show that there is evidence to back up your claim and can add credibility to your work. Statistics often create an emotional response in your audience. Think about how you feel when someone can back up their argument with statistics? Don't the statistics make you feel more strongly to the argument?

Statistics are an excellent way to enhance an argument and persuade your audience; however, there are some considerations to keep in mind. Statistics can be misleading, because they are often taken out of context. Sometimes, important information is left out about how the statistic was collected in order to make it seem more dramatic, proving big ideas or generalizations that it wouldn't if the rest of the information was included.

For example, let's say you found a statistic that said 5 out of 5 dentists recommend a certain brand of toothpaste. That sounds like this is a great brand of toothpaste that everyone should use. However, what if you found out that the dentists were all asked if they would recommend that brand of toothpaste or not brushing your teeth at all? Of course all of the dentists are going to pick the brand of toothpaste. This makes the 5 out of 5 recommendation basically meaningless. You might assume when you see this statistic that dentists were ranking this toothpaste brand over other toothpaste brands, instead of against not brushing your teeth at all; this makes the statistic misleading.

Another way statistics can be misleading is in the sample size that the data was collected in. For example, let's say you found a statistic that says 4 out of 5 women prefer wearing high heels over flats to work. However, when you start looking closer at the source the statistic came from, you find that this statistic came from someone asking 5 women they work with in a corporate law firm if they liked wearing heels or flats to work. This is a problem for several reasons.

First, the information was collected from a very small sample size (5 women who all work at the same place). These 5 women cannot represent all women and their opinions on high heels. Second, this sample is very biased, because all of the women work in the same corporate law firm. These women's opinions are not going to reflect all women's opinions, regardless of the number of women sampled, because the women are too similar to one another. If all women in all industries were surveyed for this question, the statistic would look very different. Because of this, it's always important to know the context of any statistic before you use it in your argument. Similarly, you want to be wary of statistics you find that don't have context or can't be tracked back to an original source.

Statistics is used in many fields to analyze data and make predictions. It helps separate signals from noise. Examples given where statistics is used include stock markets, quality assurance, retail, insurance, political campaigns, genetic engineering, medical studies, weather forecasting, and emergency preparedness. The document emphasizes that an important reason to study statistics is to be better consumers of information and understand when data may be manipulated.Read less

Students and teachers are surrounded by data every day and often use it to inform their decisions without fully understanding where it came from or how it was compiled. This is one of many reasons Hollylynne Lee, Ph.D., professor of mathematics and statistics education in the NC State College of Education and a senior faculty fellow with the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, believes statistics education is so important for both students and their teachers.

Although nearly every STEM career will require some understanding of data and statistics, Lee said being data literate is important for a variety of other careers, as well as many real-life scenarios.

One activity Lee has used to help children understand data in a way that is applicable to their lives is to have them analyze the nutrition labels on different foods to see how companies can manipulate data to change perceptions of their product. For example, a serving size may be listed as much smaller or much larger than the portion that a person would typically eat in order to make it seem like the food has less sugar or more protein than it actually does.

Bringing a data visualization from a news story into a math, science or even an English or social studies classroom can help get students thinking about statistics. Asking students why they think a news reporter created a data visualization, why they collected the data and if they think the story would have been different if the data was collected from a different group can help students not only understand how to interpret data, but how it can be biased.

The lack of emphasis on data and statistics in classrooms also means that many current K-12 educators did not have good learning opportunities related to the subject in their own educational careers. This, Lee said, means that many teachers often feel less comfortable teaching these lessons and may not actively make an effort to introduce them in the classroom.

To remedy this issue, Lee has created a variety of online professional learning opportunities offered through the Friday Institute that teachers can engage with on a flexible schedule, for a few minutes to a few hours at a time.

These professional learning opportunities give educators the chance to think about what aspects of the subject they are comfortable with and which areas they need improvement in while also engaging with like-minded educators from across the globe.

Her most recent grant from the National Science Foundation is developing a personalized learning platform for teachers, while also using data recommendations to learn more about their needs and offer recommendations of different learning modules.

Many people think about data as being presented in rows and columns, but data can take the form of text, images and videos. Despite this, most students are still taught using tools like graphing calculators. As more schools move to a one-to-one model, with Chromebooks for each student, Lee recommends educators who want to incorporate data lessons into their classrooms turn to online resources that offer a more authentic experience that is closer to the way students will experience data in college or future careers.

Cancer has a major impact on society in the United States and across the world. Cancer statistics describe what happens in large groups of people and provide a picture in time of the burden of cancer on society.

Statistics tell us things such as how many people are diagnosed with and die from cancer each year, the number of people who are currently living after a cancer diagnosis, the average age at diagnosis, and the numbers of people who are still alive at a given time after diagnosis. They also tell us about differences among groups defined by age, sex, racial/ethnic group, geographic location, and other categories.

Although statistical trends are usually not directly applicable to individual patients, they are essential for governments, policy makers, health professionals, and researchers to understand the impact of cancer on the population and to develop strategies to address the challenges that cancer poses to the society at large. Statistical trends are also important for measuring the success of efforts to control and manage cancer.

Mortality trends, when compared with incidence trends, can also provide evidence of improved treatments. If death rates drop faster than incidence (or if death rates drop while incidence is rising), this may reflect the availability of better treatments. For example, statistical evidence suggests that improved treatments have likely made a substantial contribution to recent sharp declines in the lung cancer mortality rate.

In the United States, the overall cancer death rate has declined since the early 1990s. Part 1 of the most recent Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, released in October 2022, shows that overall cancer death rates decreased by:

As the overall cancer death rate has declined, the number of cancer survivors has increased. These trends show that progress is being made against the disease, but much work remains. Although rates of smoking, a major cause of cancer, have declined, the rates of other risk factors, such as obesity, have increased in the United States. Also, the U.S. population is aging, and cancer rates increase with age.

The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer provides an annual update of cancer incidence, mortality, and trends in the United States. This report is jointly authored by experts from NCI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Cancer Society, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

Part 1 of the most recent report included a special section about trends in pancreatic cancer. Part 2, released in September 2023, focused on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on new cases and deaths from certain cancers. For example, new diagnoses of six major cancer types fell sharply from March to May of 2020, at the start of the pandemic. By July 2020, diagnoses of all of these cancer types except one (prostate cancer) had returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Knowing about the number of people age 65 and older is important for tribal, local, state and federal lawmakers. They will use 2020 Census statistics to help decide how to spend billions of dollars annually in federal funds on critical public services for the next 10 years.

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