What impacts can statistics and probability have on our daily lives? Be specific.

Statistics and probability influences our daily lives in all manners of way, from marketing to
predicting the economy. It measures how successful our country’s economy is and that of other
countries. Companies use our search history as a data set to predict what we will eventually buy,
or are more likely to buy. Casinos use probability against us to make money, and to draw us back
again and again. Biases present in statistics or lurking variables can influence decisions we make
in our daily life when relying on statistics.

What was one of the most valuable things you learned? Why?
By highlighting certain aspects of statistics an audience can be mislead, especially by using small
data sets that lead to extremes or purposely making a mistake to make it suit their needs. This is
important because the public hates to be misled or falling for tricks, and buying a product or
investing in a business that uses statistics in such a way are dishonest, and their products are
lower quality than they claim. Through knowing these tricks and flaws, especially bias, I can
better avoid misleading claims made.

What was something we did this year that was difficult for you? Why?
Something that was difficult for me was keeping track of what symbol meant what. This was
confusing especially because the letters were in greek, something that I do not know. Even more
confusing was that some symbols capitalized meant one thing, while it lower-cased meant
another value.

What was something we discussed in class that will relate to your life or career? How?
Statistics and probability is used all the time in the medical field, something I seek to pursue.
Knowing how accurate a test is, or how effective medication is a key component of treating
patients. Knowing how to read and interpret statistics and probability is invaluable to the medical
field, and because of this, it greatly affects my future career.

What was different about this class than you expected? Was it better or worse?
I did not realize how much we would depend on figures and tables to find values. In order to find
z-scores or t-scores we had to use a table, and then interpret it from there. The tables we used
could be as short as a quarter of a page up to three pages, like when we used the tables for
binomial distributions. Overall the class was better than I’d expected, I enjoyed learning about
how to interpret statistics and probability, two undeniably huge factors of the modern age and
business.