[ExI] Probability, covid, online education

[Dave S]

I just ran across this blog post that touches on a few things we've talked
about recently:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/12/base-rate-fallacy/

[image: covid-prob.jpg]






*When a headline says "half of hospitalizations are vaccinated" it is
innumerate fearmongering that will make people who are bad at math
misinterpret that as "vaccines are only 50% effective", or worse lies.An
increasing ratio of hospitalized vaccinated is an inevitable result of
increasing vaccination rates. It is a marker of success, not failure.E.g.:
"About two-thirds of people who die on UK roads are wearing a seatbelt, but
this is a consequence of usage rates of nearly 99%."Explaining probability,
statistics and combinatorics to the public is really, really hard. This
stuff is extremely nonintuitive even without dealing with the grifters.
Here's a really good, easy to understand video
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZGCoVF3YvM> on Bayes theorem.*

-- 

The video is by 3Blue1Brown, who did the Newton's fractal video Spike
posted here.

-Dave
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