For most of my career - notably the civil service - I've worked in organisations dominated by arts graduates. I've noticed some (not all) have a form of numbers blindness: they may be very smart, but they assess things purely on the cogency and logic of the prose argument.
They genuinely don't find a stat-filled piece such as you or Neil O'Brien might write compelling, they don't understand why someone would be unconvinced by a well-argued piece without any facts (it would convince them!) and when you do tell them to use stats, they throw them in at random, like a colour-blind person asked to decorate a cake.
I don't want to turn it into a wordcel vs shape rotator thing, but actually it's interesting that the issue here is really one of linguistic precision. There's a difference between "triple our consumption" and "triple their consumption", and you'd hope that arts graduates would be alert to that point, even if their skill set isn't necessarily in doing the sums to check which is right
It’s much worse than innumeracy - it’s not the logic of an argument that they follow so much as the social desirability of it. The numbers are almost irrelevant except as a shield of obscurity as in the case of mechanisms like CFDs.
As we retreat to the emotional safety of our social media silos, "fashionable opinion" becomes more based on what Stephen Colbert called (satirically) Truthiness: stuff that *feels true* based on our gut intuition or desire, rather than on facts, evidence, or logic...
Ironically - if they had asked AI to fact check the article for them it would almost certainly have spotted the misleading claim (I tried and it does).
I think it is pretty crazy for a major news outlet such as the Guardian to *not* have AI run over their articles before publishing as an *additional* check. The cost would be very small vs the loss of trust from making these dumb mistakes.
I don't know if that's exactly right: they've teased them for typos and being right on, but I'm not sure they've done it for lack of scientific sense? Indeed, given Private Eye's stance on MMR, it might be argued that they don't really have a leg to stand on there.
Well, it is the Guardian, bless them. Numeracy has never been a Guardian strong point - I get cross when the paper frequently gets its millions and billions mixed up. Still, in a newspaper that prides itself in the truth and the integrity of its journalism, its a very sloppy mistake to make.
For most of my career - notably the civil service - I've worked in organisations dominated by arts graduates. I've noticed some (not all) have a form of numbers blindness: they may be very smart, but they assess things purely on the cogency and logic of the prose argument.
They genuinely don't find a stat-filled piece such as you or Neil O'Brien might write compelling, they don't understand why someone would be unconvinced by a well-argued piece without any facts (it would convince them!) and when you do tell them to use stats, they throw them in at random, like a colour-blind person asked to decorate a cake.
I don't want to turn it into a wordcel vs shape rotator thing, but actually it's interesting that the issue here is really one of linguistic precision. There's a difference between "triple our consumption" and "triple their consumption", and you'd hope that arts graduates would be alert to that point, even if their skill set isn't necessarily in doing the sums to check which is right
It’s much worse than innumeracy - it’s not the logic of an argument that they follow so much as the social desirability of it. The numbers are almost irrelevant except as a shield of obscurity as in the case of mechanisms like CFDs.
As we retreat to the emotional safety of our social media silos, "fashionable opinion" becomes more based on what Stephen Colbert called (satirically) Truthiness: stuff that *feels true* based on our gut intuition or desire, rather than on facts, evidence, or logic...
True - though of course some silos are more siloed than others
It still amazes me how much stuff gets written that doesn’t pass even the most basic smell test.
Common sense ain’t that common.
Yeah, and like I say, none of these checks are exactly hard to do
Ironically - if they had asked AI to fact check the article for them it would almost certainly have spotted the misleading claim (I tried and it does).
I think it is pretty crazy for a major news outlet such as the Guardian to *not* have AI run over their articles before publishing as an *additional* check. The cost would be very small vs the loss of trust from making these dumb mistakes.
Interesting, looking forward my fact-checking skill set being rendered obsolete in short order
Private Eye has pilloried The Grauniad for years about this kind of thing
I don't know if that's exactly right: they've teased them for typos and being right on, but I'm not sure they've done it for lack of scientific sense? Indeed, given Private Eye's stance on MMR, it might be argued that they don't really have a leg to stand on there.
Well, it is the Guardian, bless them. Numeracy has never been a Guardian strong point - I get cross when the paper frequently gets its millions and billions mixed up. Still, in a newspaper that prides itself in the truth and the integrity of its journalism, its a very sloppy mistake to make.
BTW - I'm a Guardian subscriber!
Keep up the good work, Oliver
Thank you!