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| Can you count the packets of crisps? | Can you count the packets of crisps? |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| By Michael Blastland GO FIGURE - Seeing stats in a different way | By Michael Blastland GO FIGURE - Seeing stats in a different way |
| Terrified of numbers? In his regular Go Figure column, Michael Blastland explains how a bit of creative thinking can help. | Terrified of numbers? In his regular Go Figure column, Michael Blastland explains how a bit of creative thinking can help. |
| Have you got the brain for statistics? Here's all it takes. | Have you got the brain for statistics? Here's all it takes. |
| Numbers. What you see is not always what you get. So this week, Go Figure offers a quick and easy game to train the brain to unpick data. | Numbers. What you see is not always what you get. So this week, Go Figure offers a quick and easy game to train the brain to unpick data. |
| Outside London's King's Cross Station, just before the election, I snapped a crisp company seeking publicity and giving away packets coloured red, blue and yellow, with the main party leaders on the front. | Outside London's King's Cross Station, just before the election, I snapped a crisp company seeking publicity and giving away packets coloured red, blue and yellow, with the main party leaders on the front. |
| Look closely and you can see a half-empty bin for Nick Clegg, a bin full-to-overflowing for Gordon Brown, with David Cameron somewhere in the middle. Ostensibly, the data (how many crisp packets are in each bin) tells us which party, or party leader, was most popular at the time. | Look closely and you can see a half-empty bin for Nick Clegg, a bin full-to-overflowing for Gordon Brown, with David Cameron somewhere in the middle. Ostensibly, the data (how many crisp packets are in each bin) tells us which party, or party leader, was most popular at the time. |
| Here's the game: give as many reasons as you can why the data might lie. Not saying it does, or did, just asking you to imagine that it might. We'll show the most inventive below. | Here's the game: give as many reasons as you can why the data might lie. Not saying it does, or did, just asking you to imagine that it might. We'll show the most inventive below. |
| The point is not to compete with all those mammoth end-of-year quizzes for difficulty. This isn't hard. And that's the point, but it can be creative. | The point is not to compete with all those mammoth end-of-year quizzes for difficulty. This isn't hard. And that's the point, but it can be creative. |
| Number junk | Number junk |
| Many people are terrified of numbers. Clever people - and newspapers and politicians - say outrageously daft things, often, with them and about them. | Many people are terrified of numbers. Clever people - and newspapers and politicians - say outrageously daft things, often, with them and about them. |
| But making a start on teasing numbers apart is often no harder than dreaming up the stories that might explain why what we see is not what we get. A little creative scepticism goes a long way. One secret to being at ease with stats - believe it or not - is imagination. | But making a start on teasing numbers apart is often no harder than dreaming up the stories that might explain why what we see is not what we get. A little creative scepticism goes a long way. One secret to being at ease with stats - believe it or not - is imagination. |
| Counting crisp packets and working out what the number means turns out to be not so very different from counting migrants, crime, hospital mortality rates, flu cases or numerous other everyday news numbers. | Counting crisp packets and working out what the number means turns out to be not so very different from counting migrants, crime, hospital mortality rates, flu cases or numerous other everyday news numbers. |
| Take one potential explanation for the crisps: that the Brown bin has just been refilled from the boxes behind (whether true or not). It's a point about the difference between stock and flow, a principle that matters hugely to measuring and understanding the length of a hospital waiting list, for example. | Take one potential explanation for the crisps: that the Brown bin has just been refilled from the boxes behind (whether true or not). It's a point about the difference between stock and flow, a principle that matters hugely to measuring and understanding the length of a hospital waiting list, for example. |
| If the list is long but people on it are flowing fast, it might not matter that it's long: an easy concept, occasionally mangled in political argument. | If the list is long but people on it are flowing fast, it might not matter that it's long: an easy concept, occasionally mangled in political argument. |
| So the question to all those who routinely murder numbers from a failure to think about them properly is - can you count packets of crisps? And the reassurance to those of us who have to wade through the number junk is that anyone can make a start - with a little imagination. | So the question to all those who routinely murder numbers from a failure to think about them properly is - can you count packets of crisps? And the reassurance to those of us who have to wade through the number junk is that anyone can make a start - with a little imagination. |
| Who's got it? | Who's got it? |
| What do the crisps numbers tell us? Send us your inventive suggestions | What do the crisps numbers tell us? Send us your inventive suggestions |
| Did "Nick Clegg" have the prettiest girl handing them out? | |
| Thomas, Chandlers Ford | |
| People in spring prefer the sunny colour of yellow? People assume the colour indicates the flavour (yellow might seem likely to be cheese flavour, blue salt & vinegar, red BBQ beef)? | |
| Catriona, Stockport | |
| It depends how speedy the different "staff" are at handing out the crisps. The positioning of the buckets might make a difference. Especially if crowded, you might take from the nearest. Why do you think that people will take from the bin of the person they'll vote for? Perhaps they like the idea of biting the head one of the other party leaders. | |
| Andrew Rose, Edinburgh | |
| We are assuming that each bin only contains one 'flavour' of crisp (e.g. red bin could have blue and yellow packets in) We are assuming that the packets are all the same size (red packets may be bigger) We are assuming that the bins are of equal volume. We are assuming that the bins only contain crisp packets. We only have a single observation to work from (inadequate sample size) so our observation could be highly biased (a large group of Lib Dems might have just been there!) | |
| Mark, Stockport | |
| Whether supporters of a particular party are disposed to like salt crisps at all. | |
| Alan Young, Oxford | |
| The sample used is not random for several reasons eg it only looks at people who eat crisps. It would have to be done in different parts of the country instead of only looking at one specific part of London, namely King's Cross. Those are just two examples of how the sampling was selective and not random. | |
| Jayne Yeo, Strasbourg | |
| At first I though it might just be the guy on the right hadn't stocked his bin to the top yet and they were just setting up. The girl in the middle being interupted in the middle of filling her bin. Then I thought its probably because the yellow packet is more attactive as a colour and could contain cheese, cheese and onion or chicken flavour crisps where the blue and red packets traditionally tend to be plain or salt and vinegar even though they are all the same. | |
| Lee Selvester, Flintshire |