Ideas worth spreading

Why you should love statistics

2,199,278 views |

Alan Smith |

TEDxExeter

• April 2016

Think you're good at guessing stats? Guess again. Whether we consider ourselves math people or not, our ability to understand and work with numbers is terribly limited, says data visualization expert Alan Smith. In this delightful talk, Smith explores the mismatch between what we know and what we think we know.

Think you're good at guessing stats? Guess again. Whether we consider ourselves math people or not, our ability to understand and work with numbers is terribly limited, says data visualization expert Alan Smith. In this delightful talk, Smith explores the mismatch between what we know and what we think we know.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxExeter, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.

Find out how well you know your local area. (England and Wales only.)

About the speaker

Alan Smith

Data visualisation editor

See speaker profile

Alan Smith uses interactive graphics and statistics to breathe new life into how data is presented.

Daniel Kahneman | Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011 | Book

Thinking, Fast and Slow

This is the book that set my thinking off to make the quiz detailed in my talk.

Ipsos Perils of Perception Survey | Ipsos MORI, 2016 | Article

"Perceptions are not reality: what the world gets wrong"

The annual global survey of perceptions and how they differ from reality, another inspiration and the source of some of the figures in the early part of my talk.

| Explore

"How well do you know your area?"

The 'know your area quiz' I created at the UK Office for National Statistics.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxExeter, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.

Find out how well you know your local area. (England and Wales only.)