Countdown to the Next Big Count

Countdown to the Next Big Count

I’ll be reposting articles from my new LogicCheck site over the course of the next election cycle here at Critical Voter.

Continuing on the topic of mathematical fallacies:

Perhaps the problems I been discussing regarding our fallible perception of numerical information just relate to situations, like the examples I’ve used so far, involving statistics.

As Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize for creating the field of behavioral economics points out, humans do not have great instincts when it comes to navigating statistical information and questions.

For example, if I asked people if they would rather take a bet with a 5% chance of winning $100 and a 95% chance of losing $5, or buying a $5 lottery ticket with a 1 in 20 chance of winning $100, most people would go for the lottery ticket.

Read the whole thing at LogicCheck…