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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

The average citizen doesn't need to craft casual theories, they need to be able to look at them critically. Yes, an introductory statistics course doesn't cover everything, but it's absolutely the 20% effort that gets 80% of the results. Most of the worst misinformation I've seen lately surrounding covid, vaccines, etc, would be solved if everyone had a basic understanding of introductory stats as currently taught.

If we can get there, then we can talk about what we can do to improve things from there.

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> The average citizen doesn't need to craft casual theories, they need to be able to look at them critically

Yes, I agree, and this is precisely my point. My experience with introductory stats was a heavy focus on the technical details, when in fact what would be more effective is focusing on statistical logic.

I’m specifically thinking that something like Judea Pearl’s The Book of Why would be good to introduce early in stats education.

I think the biggest thing is whether people have a desire to dig deeper or not. I seems there are many people who just want to believe what they are told as long as it matches their beliefs.

Anything else is harder - and for many people, impossibly hard. Always has been this way, likely always will be.

Most people just want to pay the bills and put food on the table.

I think you underestimate the fact that most of the people we are talking about are more accustomed to "magical thinking". Any stats education that didn't align with their core beliefs would be dismissed as wrong. Even if you could proof out everything and they had the core intellectual horsepower to understand there is a level of belief in belief that underlies their worldview that you can't overcome.

I think I agree. Instead of stats I would propose critical thinking. Critical thinking was one of the more engaging classes for me. It covered a vast array of fallacies and how they can be exploited in real world. I am not sure if it is a common requirement now, but it certainly should be.

> Most of the worst misinformation I've seen lately surrounding covid, vaccines, etc, would be solved if everyone had a basic understanding of introductory stats as currently taught.

I don't know, most of the misinformation on the matter I've seen is just flat out wrong. Not misinterpreting statistics incorrect, just flat out lying, using false numbers or statements, etc. Having a cursory knowledge of statistics won't help you if you're incapable of Googling to check if a statistic is true or not.

"Most of the worst misinformation I've seen lately surrounding covid, vaccines, etc, would be solved if everyone had a basic understanding of introductory stats as currently taught."

I think a lot of it is more ideological at the "average" citizen level - on both sides. Most people aren't looking at the data, they're believing whatever they're told that aligns with their personal beliefs.

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