[R-sig-teaching] Statistics are SO boring...

[Christian Parker]

This is a great article about probability theory written by Steven 
Strogatz. His whole blog is good for non-mathematicians but this one has 
a nice example about conditional probability.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/chances-are/



On 6/24/2010 10:13 AM, Ed Merkle wrote:
> Christophe,
>
> You may already know it, but Gelman has a book on teaching statistics 
> that contains many good examples.  One that comes to mind (I think I 
> found it there, at least) involves conditional probabilities involving 
> being drunk and having a car accident at night.  The upshot is that 
> P(accident at night | drunk) is low, but P(drunk | accident at night) 
> is high (above .5, if I recall).
>
> There is also a contingency table example from the tv show 
> Mythbusters, where they study whether yawning is contagious.  They do 
> not use statistics in the tv show and end up drawing the wrong 
> conclusion.  See, for example,
>
> http://www.statisticool.com/mythbusters.htm
>
>
> Ed
>