Some of Nate Silvers 11 statistics principles for journalists:
- Correlation is not causation. Nate surmised that journalists are prone to fall into this trap because of their strong desire to tell the story about what they are reporting. It is just human nature to invent causes to connect the dots.
- The average is still the most useful statistical tool. At first, I thought to disagree with Nate here. Journalists often write about the nonexistent average person, and who has not consulted a physician who seems to describe a treatment designed to cure some average patient. However, Nate was going after a more fundamental point here. Because they are looking for interesting stories, journalists often focus on the outliers.
- Human intuition is often misleading. Nate recommended that all journalists read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
- A probability forecast expresses uncertainty instead of trying to conceal it. Nate pointed out that journalists are very comfortable with the 50/50 chance or the all or nothing story, but find the 75% chance vs. 25% chance problematic. Nate’s advice was to try to tell the truth by communicating the uncertainty.
- Know thy priors. Nate has embraced the Bayesian paradigm as the model for learning from data. He believes it would be very useful for journalists to recognize their own prior beliefs.
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Nate Silver addresses assembled statisticians at this year's JSM:
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