This video from The O’Reilly Factor nicely illustrates how little understanding many people have of basic statistical concepts like rates, ratios, means, and so on:
Found at Talking Points Memo.
The internet is now full of posts about O’Reilly being stupid. And, yes, it shows a fundamental lack of knowledge about what a “life expectancy” is–it’s like he’s confusing it with total numbers of deaths or something. But I highly suspect that a large proportion of the population would think his explanation made total sense, so I’m leaning toward giving O’Reilly the benefit of the doubt, in the sense that I doubt he’s much dumber about statistics than a lot of people–though of course most people don’t go on TV and present themselves as experts about stuff. I’m going to use the clip when I talk about basic statistics and presentations of statistical data in the media
