Socio-Economic Statistics and Probability

Othmar W. Winkler
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Othmar W. Winkler: Georgetown University, The McDonough School of Business

Chapter Chapter 10 in Interpreting Economic and Social Data, 2009, pp 185-207 from Springer

Abstract: So, you are a statistician? Then you could help me win at blackjack (a popular card game involving probability). Occasionally I find myself asked such a question at social gatherings, a reaction to the mention of statistics that takes a distant second to the reaction described at the beginning of this book. It reveals the identification of ‘statistics’ with the calculus of probability and mathematics in the minds of educated people. This should not come as a surprise, as it stems from the growing persuasion that statistical theory is identical with inference and the mathematics of probability. Social data, besides being treated as if they were ‘measurements’ in the natural sciences, are treated as the outcome of random experiments or as random samples even when they are clearly populations or unique, historic events that were not a planned experiment.2 Testing the statistical significance of characteristics of data that obviously are populations, or to analyze them with statistical methods based on inference and on the concept of random sampling, is pseudoscience. Uncritical adoption of the stochastic view of socio-economic reality and the indiscriminate use of terms like ‘random variable,’ ‘random deviation,’ and ‘random error’ are compounding these misconceptions and misuses. The ‘what, when and where’ of probability in the data relevant to a particular situation, ought to be analyzed much more carefully before the high-powered tools of statistical inference are employed.

Keywords: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome; Simple Random Sampling; Gasoline Price; International Statistical Institute; Random Error Component (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-540-68721-4_10

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-68721-4_10

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