Sunday, 13th. September 2026

I have a good understanding of Statistics, especially when it comes to seeing patterns in data and understanding what they mean. I also have a science background so there tends to be a certain rigour to my thinking and some of the things I do, like making coffee or writing. Every morning I glance through my health metrics but I do not really take a great deal of notice of them, and that is a good thing. If they were indicating something I should be concerned about, I would know, and I might then consult my doctor.

In recent years there has been a sharp increase in the number of scientific instruments that people attach to their bodies and have around their home, monitoring heart rate, sleep patterns, mass (weight), calorie intake, indoor temperature and humidity, gas and electricity consumption and so on. I understand all that data but I rarely think about it and certainly do not dwell on it. Listening to the radio I can tell that a lot of people do indeed dwell on these things, and that sometimes they become anxious and may even refer to medical professionals in the health service when really they do not need to. For some people it seems, having a wealth of daily health data can cause health problems linked to anxiety.

For me the answer is simple: teach science and statistics at school. What is the point of giving people masses of data if they do not understand how to interpret it – what it means. The same argument applies to data on a wealth of other subjects we are bombarded with daily: crime statistics, population statistics, economic indicators, mortality rates – it is an enormous list. The scope for misunderstanding is huge, as I know almost every time I visit the pub or bump into people I know.

At my university the book ‘How To Lie With Statistics’, published in 1954, was required reading. At university I also learned how scientists (very rarely) make mistakes and, in a sense, inadvertently lie, often by linking two data sets and arriving at a conclusion where a closer examination would show there is no causal relationship between them. In recent years I have witnessed an increase in the number of politicians, and consequently their followers, who brazenly lie with statistics, and it is very distressing.

Thanks to my education and life experiences I have a good understanding of what data is telling us, but at times I feel I am in a minority. That is the cause of much of my anxiety, not the wealth of data from my scales, watch, sleep monitor, blood pressure monitor – or the wealth of data presented by qualified journalists and scientists, who most certainly have a good understanding of statistics.