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In the Narrative Statistics series of posts, I’m exploring different ways to characterize fiction using statistics. I’m recovering from a flu or cold as well as a nasty cough that followed, so instead of delving into deep math, I want to review what I see as the role of statistics, at least for this series. Many people consider statistics to be magical formulae that give questionable answers. In the humanities, there seems to be a lot of mistrust for statistics because people don’t understand them.
I’ve been in the audience when someone has presented some statistical results and someone else comments that because the outliers obviously don’t agree with what they already believe to be true, the outliers must be mistakes and thus the statistical method must be suspect. They then turn around and ask what statistics can provide other than reinforcing what they already know. They first throw out any new information and then ask what new information the methods can provide. The profound lack of logic mystifies me.