full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Mona Chalabi: 3 ways to spot a bad statistic

Unscramble the Blue Letters


I started to learn some of these when I was working in a statistical department that's part of the uetind niaotns. Our job was to find out how many Iraqis had been fcreod from their homes as a result of the war, and what they needed. It was really important work, but it was also ibrindcely difficult. Every sgline day, we were making decisions that affected the accuracy of our numbers — dsioicens like which parts of the country we should go to, who we should speak to, which questions we should ask. And I started to feel really disillusioned with our work, because we thought we were doing a really good job, but the one group of people who could really tell us were the Iraqis, and they rarely got the canhce to find our analysis, let alone question it. So I started to feel really determined that the one way to make numbers more accatrue is to have as many people as possible be able to question them.

Open Cloze


I started to learn some of these when I was working in a statistical department that's part of the ______ _______. Our job was to find out how many Iraqis had been ______ from their homes as a result of the war, and what they needed. It was really important work, but it was also __________ difficult. Every ______ day, we were making decisions that affected the accuracy of our numbers — _________ like which parts of the country we should go to, who we should speak to, which questions we should ask. And I started to feel really disillusioned with our work, because we thought we were doing a really good job, but the one group of people who could really tell us were the Iraqis, and they rarely got the ______ to find our analysis, let alone question it. So I started to feel really determined that the one way to make numbers more ________ is to have as many people as possible be able to question them.

Solution


  1. united
  2. incredibly
  3. nations
  4. forced
  5. accurate
  6. chance
  7. decisions
  8. single

Original Text


I started to learn some of these when I was working in a statistical department that's part of the United Nations. Our job was to find out how many Iraqis had been forced from their homes as a result of the war, and what they needed. It was really important work, but it was also incredibly difficult. Every single day, we were making decisions that affected the accuracy of our numbers — decisions like which parts of the country we should go to, who we should speak to, which questions we should ask. And I started to feel really disillusioned with our work, because we thought we were doing a really good job, but the one group of people who could really tell us were the Iraqis, and they rarely got the chance to find our analysis, let alone question it. So I started to feel really determined that the one way to make numbers more accurate is to have as many people as possible be able to question them.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
unemployment rate 4
everyday lives 2
government statistics 2
spot bad 2
bad statistics 2
political polls 2
academic study 2
decimal places 2
show people 2
swimming pool 2
holy war 2


Important Words


  1. accuracy
  2. accurate
  3. affected
  4. analysis
  5. chance
  6. country
  7. day
  8. decisions
  9. department
  10. determined
  11. difficult
  12. disillusioned
  13. feel
  14. find
  15. forced
  16. good
  17. group
  18. homes
  19. important
  20. incredibly
  21. iraqis
  22. job
  23. learn
  24. making
  25. nations
  26. needed
  27. numbers
  28. part
  29. parts
  30. people
  31. question
  32. questions
  33. rarely
  34. result
  35. single
  36. speak
  37. started
  38. statistical
  39. thought
  40. united
  41. war
  42. work
  43. working