Some say the data speaks for itself. It doesn’t.
Without statistics, it’s easy to misread what the numbers are really saying.
Planning a trip and checking vacation prices? An average won’t tell you how wide the range can be. You could stay in a hostel or book a luxury hotel — prices can vary a lot, and an average alone won’t show you where most travelers sit within that range. Looking at the distribution shows where most trips tend to be.
Read more in How much statistics is enough to do data science.
Is the sky blue… or cake?
How does a large language model know which word comes next? Learn more about what LLMs are, how statistics help them know and how they work in this video.
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Here’s a classic worth picking up: The Lady Tasting Tea by David Salsburg. It tells the story of Ronald Fisher’s famous experiment, where a woman claimed she could taste whether milk or tea was poured first. Fisher set up a controlled test with eight cups to see if her accuracy was better than chance.
This simple challenge helped formalize ideas that became foundational in modern statistics — like the null hypothesis and statistical significance. Clear, concise, and a great grounding in why statistical thinking matters.