Journalist-Bites-Reality!
How broadcast journalism is flawed in such a fundamental way that its utility as a tool for informing viewers is almost nil. (Steve Salerno, Skeptic)
The mythical Red State/Blue State paradigm is just one of the more telling indications of a general disability the media exhibit in working with data. A cluster of random events does not a "disturbing new trend!" make -- but that doesn't stop journalists from finding patterns in happenstance. Take lightning. It kills with an eerie predictability: about 66 Americans every year. Now, lightning could kill those 66 people more or less evenly all spring and summer, or it could, in theory, kill the lot of them on one really scary Sunday in May. But the scary Sunday in May wouldn't necessarily mean we're going to have a year in which lightning kills 79,000 people. (No more than if it killed a half-dozen people named Johanssen on that Sunday would it mean that lightning is suddenly targeting Swedes.) Yet you can bet that if any half-dozen people are killed by lightning one Sunday, you'll soon see a special report along the lines of, LIGHTNING: IS IT OUT TO GET US?
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Once more - math strikes back!! This is why the core curriculum requirement for all majors includes a math course, ideally one with a statistics component :)
Well Joshua... I learned to outsource stuff that I don't feel confident about in my research, so yeah understanding is 1 but more then that? Not needed!
Mr. ADSL,
You are absolutely right - only one is needed, but would you expect to publish a story with only one paragraph? As long as you don't mind staying in the dark about understanding, you are welcome to outsource all of your mathematical knowledge. I just think that it's a shame to limit yourself that way. I took way too many courses I didn't need as a mathematician, but none of them were truly useless. However, I'm a geek, and your mileage may vary :)