Keep these questions in mind when you encounter statistics: Question 1: How was the data collected, and did the data collection method match what the study was trying to figure out? This question gets at a study's validity, which means measuring what it is supposed to measure. Sometimes results are published, but sloppiness in the way the data was

Pitfall #4: Failing to see biases

Pitfall #3: Confusing Correlation with Causation

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

Averages give us some information but not all the information we might need to understand a situation.

P-values are a probability and thus are expressed as a number between zero and one. Lower p-values mean that results are more statistically significant; higher p-values mean the results may be due to chance.

Clusters are exactly what they sound like: where notable groups of data fall.

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]

Think of the display as a puzzle that you are trying to figure out, and ask yourself the following questions: ● What is the title of the graph? ● If there are axes, what does each axis represent, and what is the scale of each axis? ● Can I pick one data point and figure out what it represents? ● What is the shape of the data? Does it show a certain