Statistical literacy

I was at Highbury College Portsmouth today as part of the Royal Statistical Society’s campaign to increase scientific and statistical literacy amongst journalists.  Today was my first one of these, with the audience comprising of journalism students, I joined Martin Blackwell as part of a double act on this.

Interestingly, I found that my major “take home message” was for them to have a healthy amount of scepticism and for them not to be afraid to contact those producing the research for further information / clarification.  Even if they are not specialist science / medicine journalists, they shouldn’t be afraid to question a scientist – if the scientist can’t explain their research to the journalist, then how could a journalist be reasonably expected to be able to communicate it to a much wider audience?

It is important for journalists to remember that scientists, like many others, often have an agenda – this may be to increase awareness and hence funding for their particular  research topic; so thinking about why one question has been looked at instead of another is important.  This is often something driven by the funding source.  If a funding source isn’t obvious and isn’t given on request, then the research is to be viewed even more critically.

When I do this again, solo, I think that I will probably run a more focused sesssion – we ran to just over two hours on this; I would focus less on the maths and more on the “how to transfer your skills” element if I run this as a one hour session.  I may also include some bits on spurious correlations with examples from http://www.tylervigen.com/ and to include the comic strip on jelly beans from xkcd to look at data fishing.

The sessions on statistics for non-specialist journalist hosted by the Royal Statistical Society, in collaboration with the Science Media Centre, and grant-funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Additional grant funding has been provided by Research Councils UK.