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2009-2010
IMA Public Lectures
Can chocolate save your life? Speaker
debunks the statistics behind the headlines
For immediate release, April 1, 2010
For information: Alice Tibbetts, 612-625-3889
The chocolate headline appeared in a newspaper in 2005 and was
based on a study involving only 14 people. Results from more
current studies are in the news again, just in time for the
Easter candy season. How do we determine if such health claims
are credible? How do we interpret the statistics behind
headlines? When are statistics manipulated to further an
agenda?
Nancy Reid, a professor of statistics at the University of
Toronto, will speak to these questions at a public lecture,
Thursday, April 22, 2010 in 175 Willey
Hall, 225 19th Avenue
South at the University
of Minnesota. She is the final speaker
in this season's free lecture series sponsored by the Institute
for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA).
When the media presents findings as definitive, the public is
misinformed, she said. "Statistics are not black and white.
In reality, there is a lot of nuance, and in the most complex
problems, there is ambiguity. One number won't tell you
anything important about climate change or cancer. Instead, we
have to ask: Where did the number come from? How can we find
more data to better inform us? What could have gone wrong?
Data is just the beginning of the conversation."
Reid will discuss the statistics behind current news stories,
including: chocolate's impact on health, whether girls are
really less capable in math than boys, the Netflix Grand Prize
for movie recommendations, and the use of new on-line visuals
to explain large data sets, such as how stimulus money is being
spent.
For updates on future public lectures:
http://www.ima.umn.edu/public-lecture.
The IMA brings together the best minds in math and the sciences
to solve pressing problems facing our society, our industries,
and our planet. It receives major funding from the
National Science
Foundation and the
University
of Minnesota.
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