Week 11 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 11 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 42–51 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (19–23 min total)

• Percentage vs. percentage points — blackboardbits
• Why a positive test for a rare disease is usually a false alarm — PALS Notes
• What Cancer Screening Statistics Really Tell Us — National Cancer Institute

① Points or percent: say which, then say both

Chapter 11, Section “Points versus percent: report both” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Points versus percent” · Remember: the plain gap between two percents is in percentage points, the gap divided by the start is a percent change, and a fair report gives both.

• Percentage vs. percentage points — blackboardbits — a seven-minute whiteboard talk that works a tax rate rising from 10 to 12 percent both ways, then a death rate rising from 2 to 3 percent; this builds on Week 9's work with samples, since the survey shares you checked there are the percents whose changes you now report. (video, 7 min) (captions: automatic)
• Glossary: Percentage point — Eurostat — a European statistics office's one-paragraph definition with a single worked rate; compare its wording with the chapter's definition and notice which related term it points you to next. Use it while working through the Week-11 module overview. (reading, 1–2 min)

② Name the base: relative and absolute risk

Chapter 11, Section “Relative versus absolute risk: name the base” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Relative versus absolute risk” · Remember: a relative change in risk means little until you know the starting risk, so write every risk as a count out of a named base.

• Drugs & The Media: Relative vs. Absolute Risk — The Body of Evidence Podcast — a four-minute animated explainer built on an invented disease, in which a pill halves a risk that was only 2 percent to begin with; listen for the moment the narrator turns a headline's relative number into two absolute ones. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
• Relative Risk Reduction Can Be Relatively Misleading — Terry Shaneyfelt — a four-minute talk comparing two invented drugs, where the one with the bigger relative reduction helps fewer people in absolute terms; as you watch, write each drug's result both ways, the way the chapter does for the risk pair. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Count the people: base rates and false positives

Chapter 11, Section “Count the people: base rates and false positives” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Count the people” · Remember: when a condition is rare, the many people without it produce more false positives than the few with it produce true ones.

• Why a positive test for a rare disease is usually a false alarm — PALS Notes — a four-minute film that counts a screening problem out in people instead of percents, starting from a group of 1,000; set its counts beside the chapter's table and say which column a person with a positive result belongs to. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
• Counting Carefully - The Base Rate Fallacy — Simple Scientist — a five-minute explainer that tests a whole imaginary country for a rare and invented condition with a very accurate test, then shows why testing only people with symptoms changes the result. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
• Maths in a minute: False positives — Plus magazine — a short article that draws a screening test as a tree of 1,000 people and reads off how many positive results are real; trace each branch and match it to a row of the chapter's table. (reading, 2–4 min)

④ Read the axis before the shape

Chapter 11, Section “Check the axis: misleading graphs” · Session 2, Segment 6, “Check the axis” · Remember: on a bar graph the length of the bar is the number, so a bar axis that starts above zero makes small gaps look large.

• Identifying Misleading Graphs - Konst Math — Bill Konst — a five-minute tour of graphs with axes that start above zero, uneven intervals, and squished scales; when the narrator calls the gap between 49 percent and 46 percent "3%", restate it in this week's terms as 3 percentage points. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
• Why our column and bar charts start at zero (or below) — Datawrapper Academy — a charting tool's short guide to why a bar must start at zero and what to draw instead when small differences matter. Stop here before checking who made a chart and why; next week takes up sources and where a claim comes from. (reading, 2–4 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• What Cancer Screening Statistics Really Tell Us — National Cancer Institute — the federal agency's explainer behind this week's real lung-screening case; look for the lung-screening trial's relative and absolute numbers and for its note that false-positive results are one harm of screening; the material on survival rates goes beyond this week. (reading, 8–12 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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