One effect psychologists study is the availability heuristic, which refers to how easy it is to draw up an example of what you believe.[xxiv]

1) Strength of association (how strong is the association between the data?) 2) Consistency (will the same results be found if different people replicate the study at different times?) 3) Specificity (how specific is the association?) 4) Temporality (did the effect occur after the cause?) 5) Biological gradient (is there a correlation between the a

Question 4: How is the data presented, and is the presentation misleading in any way? This question gets a whole chapter to itself (Chapter 9) because misleading statistical presentations are, unfortunately, very common in the media.

Pitfall #1: Ignoring scale

One-way statistics can be misleading is that they can show you correlation but not causation. In other words, just because two things happen to be linked doesn’t mean one causes the other.

This chapter will look at five common pitfalls in statistics and how you, the average consumer, can recognize them.

Once again, the median might have given you a better sense of how you did in comparison to others, and you might have felt even better about your grade.

In other words, she has a sense of the average, or mean, amount of time she needs for each task.

Pitfall #3: Confusing Correlation with Causation