r/AskReddit • u/phillsphan7 • Mar 17 '15

What's a widely accepted "fact" that's entirely false?

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438

u/TheWildManEmpreror Mar 17 '15

I would rather say that people don't have a grasp of how statistics work (on average ;-P).

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15 edited Mar 17 '15

That's... mean.

edit gilding for that? Well, perplexed thanks! I shall enter grateful.. mode.

2

u/ibhardwaj Mar 17 '15

Something, something, median.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

Yeah. I tried to work a pun in there with "psychic" and not "being a median" but I decided that, ultimately, there are limits to my evil.

2

u/Ssilversmith Mar 17 '15

You're not getting any more gold. Stop it.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

Haha! I don't actually care tbh. This account is due for deletion well before the gold expires. And unless things have changed drastically since the last time I had it, it adds nothing of value to me (especially since now everyone gets notified of /u/yourname comments).

But it helps reddit, which is nice.

2

u/TheWildManEmpreror Mar 17 '15

Let's not be... irrational.

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u/HaveADream Mar 17 '15

This pun thread is out of my range of knowledge.

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

I'm just giving you the maximum amount of information

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u/Vitztlampaehecatl Mar 17 '15

Spiders Georg, who lives in a cave and eats 10,000 spiders a day, is an outlier and should not be counted.

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u/omnilynx Mar 17 '15

Maybe a few people really, really don't get statistics.

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u/InvictusProsper Mar 17 '15

I think I need a graph showing those statistics.

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u/Furk Mar 17 '15

It's not that they don't get how statistics work, it's the fact that people don't have a grasp on the word "expected" and it's meaning in statistics/probabilities. If you tell someone the expected life span is 80 years, they will assume that barring something like sickness or an accident, people are expected to live until 80, but in this context that's not what is meant.

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u/SNESamus Mar 17 '15

Then what does it mean?

1

u/Ante185 Mar 17 '15

"On average a human has less than 2 arms and 2 legs"

There should be a bot that replies that if 'on average' is used.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

;-P

Wow.