How Statistics Get Misread: A Field Guide

The number is accurate. The conclusion you draw from it is where things go wrong. Starting from the medieval English life expectancy figure of thirty-one years at birth, this episode builds a taxonomy of the statistical categories most likely to be misread: the mean without a measure of spread, mean versus median, the fuzzy word "average," percentage change versus percentage points, relative versus absolute risk, the false positive paradox, survivorship bias, Simpson's Paradox, correlation versus causation, and regression to the mean. Each one gets a concrete example — the bar where one millionaire drags the average income to $436,000, the 99% accurate test that still only means a 9% chance you have the condition, the WWII bombers that came home with holes everywhere except the engine. The failure is almost never in the arithmetic. It lives in the step from number to conclusion. Episode #035569 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/035569