Statistics, one photo vs. a movie

You use statistical data in your argument; you give the number of specific incidents and assume that it’s done! You have completely won the argument with scientific facts!

Think again.. Did you really use science in a scientific way? Let’s say I told you I have posted 3000 blog entries, would you say wow, or: over what period of time? Would you be as impressed if I said in 10 years as if I said 10 months?

Won’t you be asking me how long the average blog entry is? Or if I searched the scientific contents in each entry or just posted cute animal photos?

Science is tricky, my point today is to discuss if we used all the possible information at one specific time, would that be enough to draw a conclusion? Or do we need more?

Let me start with an example: if I told you that between Monday and Friday last week I posted 3 blog entries about 500 words in length and that I needed an average of 30 – 90 minutes materials search for references and scientific resources. Would that be enough?

I would say: Nope. That’s a small picture of a long movie that involves posting statistics from many weeks in the past.

The same is exactly true for health statistics; some numbers are not enough, all the numbers for one time period is not enough: it does not give us the trend, the ability to see if these numbers are the norm, or if they represent decrease or increase in the overall estimate.

Statistics are multiple small sets of photos; they can be better understood- just like animated movies - when seen in order and over a period of time.