The innumeracy and the ignorance of science of even famous journalists
is out of control. Recently Elizabeth Warren took a DNA test and the press covered the results. And they totally botched the job.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/18/just-about-everything-youve-read-warren-dna-test-is-wrong/?utm_term=.269cd02dc125
This basic error in understanding the test results was compounded by the RNC’s reference to the 2014 New York Times article, which was about a genetic profile of the United States, based on a study of 160,000 people drawn from the customer base of 23andMe, a consumer personal genetics company. With reporters believing that Warren’s genome was only as little as 0.01 percent Native American*, the article’s line that “European-Americans had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American” made it appear as if Warren’s sample was even smaller than that of the average American. (*Note: an earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to the high end of range, 1.56 percent.)
end of quote
To do this was gross mathematical (in particular statistical) incompetence. Clearly native genetic material is going to be distributed in a skewed way (a few people have a whole bunch, some have small amounts, and the vast majority have little to none). Even a D- stats student would know that for a distribution such as that you use the median not the mean.
Yet more than a few top flight journalists did this. Even if you are of the opinion that it isn't a sin to not know this, it surely is one to cover mathematical things with such little knowledge of math without asking someone who does know math if what you wrote makes sense. Yet writers and editors thought nothing of putting out to a national audience a report that made a mistake we would have major problems with a competent 11th grader making.
If journalists decide to remain innumerate, that is their right, I guess. But for the love of God run articles that discuss math by people who know math then.
