a guy in a science fiction forum drew this graph to explain why women are bad at math
I used to hang out in a science fiction forum on Facebook. One day someone pointed out that we didn’t have that many female members. So, some of the dudes were like “women are just not inclined to do science. It’s basic biology” A big argument started and at one point this dude draws the above graph. When I criticized it he thought it was because I didn't understand how statistical distributions work.
Not only is the graph just something he drew, the axis also make no sense. The thing is, this happens to me all of the time. Often, during arguments people will try to make a statement that sounds… mathematical or science-y to bolster their point. Graphs, technical terms, journal citations, and and statistics are applied like decorations to a bad argument to create a veneer objectivity with the hope of intimidating the skeptical. Notice how he instructs me to “start visualizing statistical distributions.” (I teach Calculus and Linear Algebra, and most in this group knew this.) Another example from a different guy on a different topic. (Racism)
This one was arguing with me about racism. (He thought that black people mostly faced racism because they complain about it too much) He linked to some stats that he claimed backed his observations.
It turned out he didn’t know what a confidence interval was and misread a series of stats that varied between 15-57% as *95%* because of this error. *sigh* great time.
Anyways, I thought ya’ll might enjoy these!
