full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alan Smith: Why you should love statistics

Unscramble the Blue Letters


And rather like numeracy, this is not just an English problem. Ipsos MORI expanded the survey in recent yares to go across the world. And so, they asked Saudi Arabians, for every 100 adults in your country, how many of them are overweight or obese? And the average answer from the Saudis was just over a qtraeur. That's what they thought. Just over a quarter of adults are overweight or oebse. The official figures show, actually, it's nearer to three-quarters.

(lhueatgr)

So again, a big variation.

And I love this one: they asked in Japan, they asked the Japanese, for every 100 Japanese plpoee, how many of them live in rural areas? The average was about a 50-50 split, just over hafalwy. They thought 56 out of every 100 Japanese people lived in rural aares. The official figure is seven.

Open Cloze


And rather like numeracy, this is not just an English problem. Ipsos MORI expanded the survey in recent _____ to go across the world. And so, they asked Saudi Arabians, for every 100 adults in your country, how many of them are overweight or obese? And the average answer from the Saudis was just over a _______. That's what they thought. Just over a quarter of adults are overweight or _____. The official figures show, actually, it's nearer to three-quarters.

(________)

So again, a big variation.

And I love this one: they asked in Japan, they asked the Japanese, for every 100 Japanese ______, how many of them live in rural areas? The average was about a 50-50 split, just over _______. They thought 56 out of every 100 Japanese people lived in rural _____. The official figure is seven.

Solution


  1. people
  2. quarter
  3. years
  4. laughter
  5. areas
  6. obese
  7. halfway

Original Text


And rather like numeracy, this is not just an English problem. Ipsos MORI expanded the survey in recent years to go across the world. And so, they asked Saudi Arabians, for every 100 adults in your country, how many of them are overweight or obese? And the average answer from the Saudis was just over a quarter. That's what they thought. Just over a quarter of adults are overweight or obese. The official figures show, actually, it's nearer to three-quarters.

(Laughter)

So again, a big variation.

And I love this one: they asked in Japan, they asked the Japanese, for every 100 Japanese people, how many of them live in rural areas? The average was about a 50-50 split, just over halfway. They thought 56 out of every 100 Japanese people lived in rural areas. The official figure is seven.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
official figures 3
numeracy skills 2
english problem 2
ipsos mori 2
average answer 2
big variation 2
teenage girls 2
british public 2
post code 2
census data 2
repeating icons 2


Important Words


  1. adults
  2. answer
  3. arabians
  4. areas
  5. asked
  6. average
  7. big
  8. country
  9. english
  10. expanded
  11. figure
  12. figures
  13. halfway
  14. ipsos
  15. japan
  16. japanese
  17. laughter
  18. live
  19. lived
  20. love
  21. mori
  22. nearer
  23. numeracy
  24. obese
  25. official
  26. overweight
  27. people
  28. problem
  29. quarter
  30. rural
  31. saudi
  32. saudis
  33. show
  34. split
  35. survey
  36. thought
  37. variation
  38. world
  39. years