Stats

I was invited to a free dinner at the Elements, the new expensive restaurant in Cache Valley. Of course I wanted to go but there was a catch, we had to listen to a presentation on fire safety. I was just fine with that and I still enjoyed the dinner. I am also taking a stats class at the moment and I can say I hate stats, but there is a lot of good that has come from me taking this class. The main thing I have learned in stats is how unreliable stats can be. It is so easy to make anything say whatever you want. So at this dinner, the guy went off on a lot of stats. He showed us a video from the 70s that also had a lot of stats saying that 55% of the time smoke detectors don't sound in a real fire and others. I was surprised at how many people were just taking his word for it and appeared ready to buy whatever he was selling. I did have fun discrediting his stats has much as I could with the group that invited me. But even though I really don't like my stats class right now I can see that it has helped me be aware of smooth talkers and it is just nice being educated so people can't take advantage of you.