Wiki defines statistics as “the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data”*. We encounter stats every single day of our lives through a load of different sources such as advertising, on television and all over the internet.
It is unknown how many adverts we encounter but it has been estimated that on a daily basis we are exposed to around 76** – “exposure” referring to those that we pay some level of attention to. This same article goes on to say that it is estimated that we actually see about 560 advertisements a day but we just ignore the vast majority of them – a relatively high number especially since it fails to consider the adverts that we are inundated with over the internet.
But how does this relate to stats?
The first thing that springs to mind when I think of an advert on television is absurd claims such as “90% of men found that using the new Lynx deodorant they got significantly more female attention” – at first glance, this should make any man want to head over to Tesco and pick up the new Lynx Anti-Freeze (or whatever their new cool brand is) but those with at least a basic grasp of stats will realise that their may be some flaws in the methodology behind this astonishing figure. For example, they may have asked 10 men, or 10 000 men. The attention may have been positive, or it may have negative. Without some understanding, the statistics we come across every day would undoubtedly have us fooled and at the mercy of the media, unable to decipher truth from what “they” want us to think.
I think that a strong statistical background only becomes truly important for those who work in a scientific or academic environment. This is because statistics are an integral part of the empirical method. It is difficult to prove a theory without their use, so scientists and academics must rely on them to show that they are correct. This holds significance in psychology of course, otherwise the battle to be considered a science would surely fail – oh no! For many psychologists though, the results of experiments are all that matter, they are trusted and the statistics behind them are rarely properly considered.
What I am saying here is that a basic statistical background is beneficial to all people to have, but beyond that is relatively unimportant for the vast majority. A clinical psychologist could be forgiven for having a dislike for stats as it is not as important as, for example, knowing the causes and treatments of various mental disorders.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics
**http://ams.aaaa.org/eweb/upload/faqs/adexposures.pdf
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