This blog is mostly about Statistics as a science rather than statistics as numbers. But just occasionally the statistics themselves are so shocking, they’re worthy of a mention.
With this in mind I was struck by two statistics of a similar theme in the following tweet from Ben Goldacre (author of the Bad Science website and book):
Segt Pepper is closer to WW1 than today, yes yes, but this tweet is the next level. https://t.co/DnMxrFyVQT
— Ben Goldacre (@bengoldacre) September 5, 2019
Moreover, in the discussion following Ben’s tweet, someone linked to the following cartoon figure:
This shows that even if you change the way of measuring distance from time to either phylogenetic distance or physical similarity, the following holds: the distance between a sparrow and T-Rex is smaller than that between T-Rex and Stegosaurus.
Footnote 1: this is more than a joke. Recent research makes the case that there is a strong evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs. As one of the authors writes:
We now understand the relationship between birds and dinosaurs that much better, and we can say that, when we look at birds, we are actually looking at juvenile dinosaurs.
Footnote 2. Continuing the series (also taken from the discussion of Ben’s tweet)… Cleopatra is closer in time to the construction of the space shuttle than the pyramids.
Footnote 3. Ben Goldacre’s book, Bad Science, is a great read. It includes many examples of the way science – and Statistics – can be misused.
