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IAP 2003 Activity


Can You Rely on Statistics to Make Important Life Decisions?
Michael Stiefel, Leon Trilling
Mon Jan 13, 03-05:00pm, 4-231

No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event

Important life decisions are fraught with uncertainty and risk. Thinking about such problems requires probabilistic or statistical inference. Yet engineering education develops a false view of such reasoning. Concepts such as average, normal, or likely, mean different things when measuring physical quantities as opposed to human choices such as medical treatments, investments, global warming, or war with Iraq. We would like to demonstrate how one should think about such problems. Bad statistics are not the issue here; we know you can lie with statistics and probabilities. We want to develop ways to use probability to reason and evaluate evidence and new information in the light of past beliefs.
Contact: Michael Stiefel, E51-185, (617) 739-4730, michael@reliablesoftware.com
Sponsor: Science,Technology & Society
Latest update: 01-Nov-2002


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