Stepping Stones to Streetwise Statistics - Ken McKelvie
27th March 2010
From time to time, stories of major decisions based on the misinterpretation, or disregard, of official data appear in our national media. Examples might be (i) unacceptable hospital-specific mortality rates attributable to mismanagement in the National Health Service or (ii) gross overspends on publicly-funded capital projects. If we assume that the education of the providers and the receivers of the data included mathematics to at least GCSE or A-Level, this assumption raises the questions "Why do the misinterpretations arise?" and "How might they be avoided?"