Statistics Seminar: Communicating numbers and uncertainty to non-statisticians

Title: Communicating numbers and uncertainty to non-statisticians

Speaker: Prof. Kevin McConway (The Open University)

Slides of the talk can be found here.

Summary:

As statisticians, we are used to working with and talking about uncertainty. Arguably, that’s our job. But we need to get uncertainty across to other people – fellow researchers who are not statisticians, people and organisations for whom we do consultancy, journalists, the general public. This is not made easier by the fact that some of the numerical information we might need to get across is in itself not easy for others to follow, even without taking uncertainty into account. What’s meant by a percentage change in a percentage, to someone who is not necessarily strong on what a percentage is? What’s an odds ratio, or a hazard ratio, and why and when might they matter to someone not involved in the research? And that’s before we get onto confidence intervals, margins of error, or p values. Based on my experience of working with journalists, I shall describe some of the issues. I will briefly cover some aspects of how the mainstream and other media work, and why it’s important for statisticians to understand that. I'll also comment on how Covid-19 changed some of the processes.