Sneaky Averages
02/29/24 • 53 min
Do you work with data and statistics?
Actually, it doesn't matter if you do or not, you're bound to have come across averages of some kind at some point.
And, as we discuss in this episode, the average can often hide key information about a data set.
We'd love to know your thoughts or experiences with Sneaky Averages.
email us: [email protected]
There's an old story about the statistician who drowned after seeing that the average depth was 3ft. Averages, or in this case the mean, necessarily hide some data, but very often they also hide what's really going on.
As Jono's psychology professor at UC Berkeley, Sheldon Zedeck, taught him; spend time with your data.
You can find the headline sketch here.
Other sketches referenced in this episode include:
Additionally, we mention the very entertaining website spurious correlations - where you'll find a whole load of amusing graphs.
We mentioned Edward Tufty's work: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
There's the ever-fascinating musings of Tim Harford in his podcast (More or Less) and his book (The Undercover Economist)
And there's our mate Jez Clements who holds the Guiness World marathon record for the fastest male dressed as a 3D TV Character.
Finally, I'm not the only one who struggles saying the word "statistics" repeatedly!!
Find many more sketches at Sketchplanations.com
All Music on this podcast series is provided by Franc Cinelli. Find many more tracks at franccinelli.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Do you work with data and statistics?
Actually, it doesn't matter if you do or not, you're bound to have come across averages of some kind at some point.
And, as we discuss in this episode, the average can often hide key information about a data set.
We'd love to know your thoughts or experiences with Sneaky Averages.
email us: [email protected]
There's an old story about the statistician who drowned after seeing that the average depth was 3ft. Averages, or in this case the mean, necessarily hide some data, but very often they also hide what's really going on.
As Jono's psychology professor at UC Berkeley, Sheldon Zedeck, taught him; spend time with your data.
You can find the headline sketch here.
Other sketches referenced in this episode include:
Additionally, we mention the very entertaining website spurious correlations - where you'll find a whole load of amusing graphs.
We mentioned Edward Tufty's work: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
There's the ever-fascinating musings of Tim Harford in his podcast (More or Less) and his book (The Undercover Economist)
And there's our mate Jez Clements who holds the Guiness World marathon record for the fastest male dressed as a 3D TV Character.
Finally, I'm not the only one who struggles saying the word "statistics" repeatedly!!
Find many more sketches at Sketchplanations.com
All Music on this podcast series is provided by Franc Cinelli. Find many more tracks at franccinelli.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Previous Episode
Groupthink
It can be uncomfortable to express opinions different from those of a group. Perhaps you remember that feeling when a teacher asked a question in class and if everyone raised their hand to one answer it wasn't always easy to be the only hand up for a different one.
That's Groupthink!
Do you remember the story of 12 Angry Men? How it took the resilience of one jury member to arrive at a correct verdict of not guilty.
That's Groupthink.
Thankfully, Jono suggests various ways to help avoid falling into the Groupthink mentality. See the sketch online for more details.
The sketchplanation itself is set in a professional environment - where I'm sure many people have experienced it.
Let us know.
email [email protected]
Other sketches referenced include:
We also reference the concept of psychological safety - a very apt phrase in this context coined by American author and Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, Amy Edmondson
All Music on this podcast series is provided by Franc Cinelli. Find many more tracks at franccinelli.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Next Episode
Should we stop using "Bi-weekly"?
The three of us are tired of being misunderstood when we've used the words "biweekly", "bimonthly" and "biannually".
It's just no fun.
And so we're starting the campaign to ditch biweekly and use fortnightly instead. See sketch here.
Try it out. You won't regret it.
Our discussion turns to the general ambiguity of language and how in many senses it's quite a good thing.
It allows for creative writing, comedy and ease of communication.
Lots of bits to link to this week from this week's episode - enjoy:
- Ian Hollingshead book - Imagine my surprise...
- William Empson's book - The 7 types of Ambiguity
- TED talk by Lera Boroditsky & here's her Instagram account too.
- Sketch on the Oxford comma
- Sketch on Context is King
- Sketch on Capitonyms
- Sketch on homonyms, homographs, homophones, heteronyms
Please consider giving us a review or subscribing to our podcast on your podcast player. It really helps.
Please also consider putting in a pre-order for Jono's Sketchplanations book: Big Ideas, Little Pictures. Out very soon now.
We'd love to hear your stories of any confusion with the words biweekly, bimonthly or biannually.
Ping us an email to: [email protected]
All Music on this podcast series is provided by Franc Cinelli. Find many more tracks at franccinelli.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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