Water Cooler Small Speak: Simpson’s Paradox | by Maria Mouschoutzi, PhD | Nov, 2024

STATISTICS

Is your knowledge tricking you? What are you able to do about it?

Picture created by the writer utilizing GPT-4 / All different pictures created by the writer except specified in any other case

Water cooler small speak is a particular type of small speak, sometimes noticed in workplace areas round a water cooler. There, staff continuously share every kind of company gossip, myths, and legends, inaccurate scientific opinions, indiscreet private anecdotes, or outright lies. Something goes. So, in my Water Cooler Small Speak posts, I focus on unusual and often scientifically invalid opinions I’ve overheard within the workplace which have left me speechless.

Right here’s the water cooler second of at this time’s publish:

Let’s preserve it easy — I simply want one quantity that exhibits the large image, the aggregated knowledge. There isn’t any have to overcomplicate issues…

Certain, however what if the large image is hiding the true story?🤷🏻‍♀️ What if issues are in actual fact simply sophisticated? Enterprise customers love the idea of ‘only one quantity’ — it’s easy, it’s clear, it’s straightforward to know. Nonetheless, actuality not often aligns with ‘only one quantity’. Most of the time, the true world is rather more complicated and nuanced, with layers and layers of data and particulars, and a single quantity can’t inform us a lot about what is admittedly taking place.