1 in 3 people will click on this blog…

Are you one of the lucky 1 in 3 people to have clicked on this blog? How do you even know 1 in every 3 people will click on this blog… because I sure don’t. Look how easy it was to come up with a statistic that is reasonably believable. Despite having done zero research into how many of you may click on this blog, I absolutely could have fooled you to believe my fake statistic. In a way, my tactic could be seen as fake news.

Luckily for me, being a future high school Math teacher means that including statistics and logic in my classroom would be not only reasonable, but expected. What better way to combat fake news than to do the research on your own right? Taking a look at this picture from the “Break the Fake” activity, what would you assume… real or fake?

Anyone who knows about phone plans could likely realize that 500MB, assuming that is a monthly plan, is an incredibly low amount of data. Could this be a typo? Could this be a satirical post? Each person’s answer will be different but I am confident we can all agree that a corporation as big as the Toronto Raptors would not offer such a small deal to one of their most influential and profitable players. We could even extend this to something perhaps more close to home, education! More specifically the wages here in Saskatchewan.

 

 

 

If you have been around Regina I am sure you have seen this billboard. Any normal person would think “wow! Teachers make so much? Why are they complaining and going on strike? I would sure like a 7% salary increase over 3 years! In my personal experience, I know a lot of people that like to look at an average and extrapolate that to the entire population saying that EVERYONE makes that money.

 

 

 

 

 

Lets take a look at the teacher salaries for the 2022/2023 year. The “steps” refer to years of service and as you can see, most of the scenarios of class and years of service indicate that teachers are way below that average. Also, there are so many other factors into the whole job actions and negotiations that have happened in roughly the last year.

• What resources do SK teachers have that other provinces don’t and vice versa?
• What amount of our teachers are in which steps?
• Why do SK teachers strike so much more than other provinces? (my assumption)

The point I am trying to get at is a simple statistic like this is just a tiny fraction of the entire problem and unfortunately…all it takes is a simple statistic (whether right or wrong) to convince a lot of people.

So it is easy to see how statistics can be misleading and the following linked video is a fantastic short video students could watch to better understand why they should approach statistics skeptically. Better yet, its from a trusted source which is Ted-Ed! Depending on which statistic you look at, each hospital in the video looks more favorable than the other.

 

 

Graphs are another fantastic statistic tool but its a tool that can also be incredibly misleading. Ted-Ed yet again is back at it with a fantastic and easily approachable video that talks about the dangers of graphs (they wont hurt you, but they could mislead you). At first glance, the graph belows looks like the job loss increases linearly across the timeline but if you look at the time difference of each point, we can see that they are not all equal. This shows us that the graph has been manipulated to show a bended truth that misleads us to believe in technically the wrong results.