Statistical awareness promoting a data culture

Abstract

Good statistics can do a lot of good: They help to base decisions on factual arguments, they can simplify conflict resolution. This requires an understanding of the opportunities and risks, the strengths and limitations of statistical facts. Overestimation leads to exaggerated expectations and disappointments, underestimation to missed opportunities, risks. Even worse is the trouble if facts are influenced or manipulated with political intentions or if even the impression of arbitrariness is created with so-called ‘alternative facts’. The very bad excesses of political misuse of statistics are carried out with intent and not negligently. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the virus of false and manipulated information flourishes when the statistical literacy of the population is at a low level. On the less serious scale of missed opportunities or too high expectations regarding statistics, there are, of course, also observations that suggest that an improvement in statistical literacy would be very good for politics, both on the part of the population and on the part of politics itself. Overall, the aim must be to promote and nurture a culture in which a conscious and experienced approach regarding data and statistics has become the standard.