- [Voiceover] Good old statistics. You have to appreciate statistics. They're great at helping to organize data. Now, the idea of this confidence in data, well they give you different confidences depending on is it a high confidence that this pretty good reason that everything fell at one point here. Or is it low confidence with a lot of variability. But one thing to keep in mind about statistics, depending on how statistics are presented they can kind of show the data in different ways, depending on how the graph is shown. Is the graph evenly spaced across the whole plane. Is it going one, two, three, four, five, six, seven for instance. Or is it going two, four, six, eight and also compressing everything. The graph is meant to give you a picture but depending on how the picture is made can also partially determine what the statistics show. What particular features are you looking for? It's all based on what information was given, as far as what the statistics can show. When we start looking at this mass media again, anecdotes from scientific evidence. Basically an anecdote is testimony or unverified reports. It's someone claiming to have seen the Abominable Snowman maybe, but they don't have pictures, they don't have proof. That would be an anecdotal report because they're claiming it is but there's no proof to show it happened. Scientific evidence is when you have the proof. So if someone claimed to have found Big Foot they have pictures of it, they have maybe a carcass from an Abominable Snowman that has passed along. The idea is though there is something physical to show. The difference of anecdotes from scientific evidence. Anecdotes, say pretty much anything, it's not verified. Scientific evidence, there's proof through experimentation. There's proof through physical evidence. There's something that shows that the statement is accurate. Separation of facts and conclusions. Conclusions, is just basically one's judgement from the facts they have. You conclude that if you're looking at leaves on a tree and they're orange and reds and yellows, the leaves have started to change colors. Well the fact is that tree has red leaves, that tree has orange leaves, that tree has yellow leaves. Well the leaves are changing colors so you conclude or you make a conclusion saying it must be Fall because during Fall leaves change color. So if the judgement, you made the judgement that it is Fall based on the fact of the leaves changing colors. Now we start thinking about correlations and causations. So gone through anecdotes and evidence, we gone through a bunch of different groupings here. But when we start looking at the difference between correlation and causation, now two events may both occur at the same time but not be related. You could have one person in one city jump up an down. Another person in a totally different city at the exact same instant could lie down. Do they have anything to do with each other? No. You could look at a stream running downhill, down a mountain. As that stream runs downhill you can notice a leaf falls from a tree. Do they relate at all? No, not necessarily. So therefore, they are correlated because they both occur at the same time but they do not cause each other. The running water did not cause the leaf to fall. The leaf falling did not cause the water to fall. In the other example, the person jumping in one city did not cause the person to lie down in another city. Just like the person that lied down didn't cause the person to jump in a different city. So here's ones that's kind of a weird morbid one that comes out of the book but, drownings and ice cream sales both increase at the same time. Well does that mean more people are drowning because they're eating ice cream? That doesn't make a lot a sense. So they're correlated because they both occur at the same time. Typically you'll increase the amount of drownings and increase the amount of ice cream sales in the summer time. Why? They're correlated because they're both in summer, same time and both warm. It's more common to go swimming when it's warm. It's more common to eat ice cream when it's warm. So they're correlated by that same time, probably same temperature idea but neither one causes the other one. So science is consistently improving technology and the human condition. Look at the life expectancy of individuals. That's improving constantly based on technology. So what'll happen is you apply the technology that was discovered through scientific processes. Think about some a the ways that energy is produced nowadays. You start thinking of solar production, wind production, geothermal production. All these technologies came about because of scientific discoveries. Discoveries on the case of solar, how to convert the sun's light into an energy source. Wind, how to take the wind, which is more of a older technology and just cause it to spin a turbine to generate energy. Geothermal, learning how to capture the heat from the Earth and utilize it in home environments or business environments. But there are limits. There are physical explanations for the natural world. Why is this rock hard? Why is the wind blowing right now? Why is this planet... The problem is, it cannot explain everything. Science can help us make informed choices. Science look at the facts, it helps you draw your conclusions but science can not always say why someone's in a bad mood, or why is this person happy right now. Sometimes things are beyond limitation. So science can be very very helpful but it can't answer everything. So as far as science and society, just take a look. Look around you, see what you see around you and know hey, this is because of that invention or this is because of this experimentation. But just keep in mind, when you see something in the mass media, in the news, on the internet, just take a second to think before you say "Oh it must be true." Just stop, think, be a little skeptical. Just ask yourself, "Well why are they saying that's true? What's the sources behind it?"