Hot Spots in Statistics

Hot Spots in Statistics:

• Statistics in Sporting

In the last few years, statistics has played a more prominent role in the decisions of front offices in terms of who they sign and what shots they want players to take. There has been some backlash from players, most notably after CJ McCollum made shot after shot from midrange in Game 7 against the Denver Nuggets and all of those shots that were made were considered "bad shots". Players shot their opinions back and said that if he was not taking those shots, they do not win the game and that a good player will take those shots that might not be statistically good shots, but it was the best shot to take at that time. (More Info)

• Statistics and the Anti-vax movement

There is an overflowing cornucopia of information from veritable sources disproving that vaccines cause autism. Yet that belief remains. For some reason, people put more stock in stories that have been passed down rather than statistics which show that 1 in 500 who contract measles who have not been vaccinated will die from measles-related complications whereas 1 in 1,000,000 who are vaccinated will contract measles. (More Info)

• Lack of Appreciation for Statistics and the Environment

The issue with statistics and the environment stands in stark contrast to that of the anti-vax movement. The biggest issue with statistics and the environment is that there seems to be an impenetrable bubble of apathy surrounding the majority of the human inhabitants of the world. Statistics such as 100,000 marine animals a year die from plastic entanglement and approximately 1,000,000 sea birds die as well, are not enough to motivate people to action. What is sad is that this is the case because it does not increase businesses bottom line to be environmentally aware. (More Info)

Of these three, I am most passionate about statistics and the environment right now. It reminds me of Stephen Covey's theory about quadrant 2 living about focusing on things that are important but are not urgent. We are so trained to think about what is urgent and important or what is urgent and not important, and oftentimes what is neither important nor urgent before we seek to do productive things before they are urgent. The environment has been in the not urgent, but important category for a long time, and if we had started caring a long time ago we could have gotten ahead of the issue. Now it is becoming increasingly more important and urgent, but the need to get to work by taking a car is more urgent and so we still find ourselves taking our car. The need to efficiently carry my groceries is more urgent, so plastic bags are used. The task now is to disarm people of their apathy and replace their apathetic armor and shields with resolute swords and axes to wield drastic changes in how we treat the world we live in.