What makes discussions about statistics sound cold? That's what we're talking about on today's episode of Developer Tea and ways that you can start to unravel this incorrect perspective on statistics. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and you're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on this show is to help you as a driven developer uncover your career purpose so that you can have a positive influence on other people. Again, that's a basic version of the goal of this show and we explore this in many different ways. I hope that by talking about these subjects, perhaps I flip a switch in your brain that you kind of always had ready to flip, that perhaps I turn on a light bulb for you. Like certain times in my life, light bulbs have been turned on for me. When I realized that I enjoy learning so much, this was when I was much younger, that was a light bulb moment for me. So I'm hoping that this podcast is full of those moments for you where you have an epiphany about yourself or perhaps about your situation, something that helps you connect better to yourself, better to your own purpose. And I hope that this discussion about statistics will be exactly that. So I want to talk to you about statistics. I want to talk to you about statistics. I want to start out by kind of backing up and talking about the word statistics so we all understand, you know, what is the etymology? Where did this come from? What exactly is statistics? And as it turns out, the stat portion of the word statistics is referring to state. These are state-sponsored pieces of information is really what statistics is. State-sponsored gathering, like a census. That's what statistics came from. And so, in Googling around a little bit, I found this online etymology dictionary that talks about statistics. And it basically says statistics came around in 1770. The word did. And the basic meaning is science dealing with data about the condition of a state or community. So statistics have always been about understanding people. This is kind of a weird. Reality that we we kind of flip on its head in today's world of data driven decisions and all of these things that, you know, you kind of get this montage. If you were watching a 90s movie of zeros and ones going across the screen and somebody crunching a bunch of numbers. And that's kind of the popular perspective on what data analysis and statistics really means. Unfortunately, this is a total skewed perspective on what statistics. Actually is. And it's important that we as developers and really as anyone in a creative field, anyone in a business field has a better grasp on what exactly it means. To make decisions based on statistics and to even analyze statistics. So I'm really excited to talk about the subject. It's something that I'm very passionate about. If you can't tell. And we talk about. You know, things surrounding the concept of statistics. Quite a lot. A bit on this show. We've talked about rational decision making, talked about bias. And all of this really centers around Bayesian thinking. If you haven't looked at Bayesian decision making systems and I encourage you to Google that. That's a Bay Bay is spelled B-A-Y-E-S. Essentially what Bayes decision making shows us is that we weigh things and then we make decisions based on the weights. That's a very simple. Simplified version. Of how we make decisions. So we've talked about statistics from that angle in terms of how humans view the world and whether or not we're good at status statistics by default. Kind of intuitive statisticians. The spoiler alert is that we're not very good. As intuitive statisticians. But it's my belief and I believe quite a few other developers and successful entrepreneurs beliefs. That. Having a baseline view of how statistics can apply to everyday decisions is extremely important. And I realize this is a controversial topic. This is something that if you were to sit down and talk with any given other person in your company you're likely to have clashing viewpoints on. But I want to share with you kind of some defusing ways to think about statistics and unload these terms a little bit. Start. From the start. And then. You start to think about the ways that you've used data. To destigmatize. The ways that they've become cold or otherwise abused and misused. In conversations. That maybe you haven't even had but other people have had or perhaps. Culture has propagated about data and statistics. But first I want to take a moment to talk about today's incredible sponsor. Woo commerce. We couldn't do what we do without our sponsors on the show so. I want to take a moment to thank WooCommerce. For being a consistent sponsor. And for being a consistent sponsor. This quarter. WooCommerce is customizable e-commerce built on WordPress. And it's important we talked about having a baseline already a little bit in this conversation. And in just a bit we're going to talk about how we. Whether we want to or not. We're thinking statistically all the time. But one of the ways that we think statistically is by having default behaviors. Default behaviors act as a baseline for our actions. And our actions. At the baseline. Are determined by. The average outcomes of those actions in the past. WooCommerce can be a baseline for you. It can be a default action. Default. That you go to when you have a e-commerce. Solution to build. WooCommerce is an open source e-commerce solutions built on top of WordPress. And nearly 30% of all online stores on the web are powered by WooCommerce. So I want to take a moment to really talk about the! The most common. E-commerce. Solution. That is. WooCommerce. And I want to take a moment to recognize why that's important. 30% that means that almost one in three and certainly more than one in four. Websites that are e-commerce sites that you visit are likely to be WooCommerce. Now the important fact here is that that's actually a heuristic. We're talking about a type of stat. Statistic information. It doesn't necessarily directly tell you anything about WooCommerce except. Except. That a lot of businesses are depending on it. A lot of businesses are depending on it every day. To handle their e-commerce. Right? So that's an important reality that helps you kind of parse how WooCommerce may be useful to you. With WooCommerce. You own your data forever. Setting up a store for the first time is incredibly easy because the plugin includes a guided installation. Now this includes configuring your data. Now, if you've been using WooCommerce for a long time, you might have noticed that there's a little bit of a gap in the data. Now, that's because WooCommerce is a free software. It's free. It's free. It's free. It's free. It's free. It's free. It's free. It's free. It's free. Now, this includes configuring payments, shipping and taxes. you set up your store. There's also a 12 part email series that you can opt into. You don't have to opt out of it. You opt into it for tips and ideas towards making the first sale security and how to create backups and more. I want you to go and check out WooCommerce, especially with the web security and security features. Because you don't want to be sitting in a store with a lot of security and security features. Because you don't want to be sitting in a store with a lot of security and security features. Because you don't want to be sitting in a store with a lot of security and security features. if you're in this group of people who needs a new default. You can get 20% off by using the code developer T. Now, again, this is basically the very last day that you can do this. So if you're listening to this podcast, the last day in March of 2018, this is the last day you get this 20% off. So head over to woocommerce.com slash developer T. That's woocommerce.com slash developer T and use the code developer T. That's all one word at checkout for that 20% off. Thank you again to WooCommerce for sponsoring today's episode of developer T. So how can we make statistics more approachable and kind of redefine the meaning, the meaning of statistics? The reality is part of the bad rap that statistics gets is due to the perception that we have of the world. And so we have to be able to define the meaning of statistics. That statistics themselves are prescriptive. And perhaps even the perspective that the reporting of those statistics is somehow one in the same as the statistic itself. We tend to distrust statistics because very often we see them not represent reality in some way or another. For example, polling. This is a commonly referred to as a type of reporting. And so we tend to distrust statistics because very often we see two subjects when it comes to statistics. Other examples of this include disregarding the entire field of data study or data driven decision making, or just statistics altogether, ignoring the idea, for example, of trends, because you believe that your data is insufficient, right? That you don't have enough information to be able to apply statistics or statistic models. And so we tend to distrust statistics because very often we see that statistics are to the data that you're using. Perhaps the most common issue that we see with trusting statistics is not understanding how to parse them completely, how to really understand what they mean, what that data means. And this is partially the job of the people who are creating the communication for those statistics. For example, the people who create the data visualizations that are describing the data that we're using. And so we tend to distrust statistics because very often we see that statistics are not the data that we're using. And so we tend to distrust statistics because we have kind of a long hill to climb to convince people who already distrust or perhaps otherwise discard the concept of statistics as useful to them. And we have a long hill to climb to convince those people that statistics are useful. But perhaps we can start by using everyday conversation as a beginning, kind of a jumping off point, right? So if you're listening to this and you've heard a lot of fall in the category of someone who kind of intuitively distrusts the conversations around statistics, I want to key in on a few things that we say in everyday conversation that actually allude to statistical properties. For example, things like average. Okay. One example would be the term average. Very often we refer to the concept of average and we use the concept of average in our conversations. And so we tend to distrust statistics. And so we tend to distrust in conversation directly. But perhaps the more interesting kind of linguistic thing to note is we use terms that essentially mean the same thing as average, or they may mean the same thing as mode or median very regularly in conversation. Even the term that I just used, regularly, relies on some kind of collective assessment of multiple conversations. 10, or 500. If I said I regularly talk about statistics concepts in my conversations, then I can look at the experience of multiple conversations that I've had and identify that, once again, multiple of those, perhaps more than not, have something to do with statistics, right? So even the term regularly, but we can also look at terms like usually, which is almost exactly the same meaning, usually has almost exactly the same meaning as mode, right? The thing that happens most often. Well, mode is the piece of information that occurs most often. Perhaps the biggest statistical kind of weighted term that we use all of the time, and we don't really think actively about statistics, is the word expect. When we use the word expect, we are using, perhaps, some complicated internal calculations. Those calculations may be informed by intuition or gut. They may be informed by emotions. They may be informed by logic. But ultimately, when we say something like, I expect X and Y to happen, we're making a claim that is based off of some kind of statistical process. And that's what we're doing. We're making a claim based off of some kind of statistical process. And that's what we're doing. We're making a claim based off of some kind of statistical process. This is very similar to forecasting. The process of forecasting uses information from the past in order to predict events of the future. So when we say that we expect something to happen, for example, if I throw a ball up and 10 times out of 10, the ball comes down, then on time number 11, I expect the ball to come down. That's because in my mind, I've got a lot of information that I've got to predict. And I've got a lot of information that I've got to predict. And I've got a lot of information that I've got to predict. And I've got a lot of information that I've got to predict. And I've got a lot of information that I've got to predict. done a very simple calculation. This happens every time. And therefore, based off of that 100% statistic, I expect the same thing to happen again. So we're not trying to do anything here. We're not trying to highlight these specific content of detail here. Really, what we're trying to do is come to the realization that even if we believe that statistics are a cold and inhuman way of looking at life, we use them and we use terms that are statistical in nature to describe everyday life. This is much less about calculation and much more about information. And unfortunately, because the field of statistics is very often kind of convoluted with things like big data, we can, we can easily see them as the same thing. This is important for developers to understand, we need to start talking about these things in much more human terms, in ways that are more applicable to our current situations that help us solve problems, rather than simply being interesting. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. We're going to continue this discussion and talk about more practical ways that you can apply these concepts to your life. And I'll see you in the next episode. to bring more statistical thinking into the work that you do and help others to think along similar lines so you can make better decisions. I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor once again. Today's sponsor is WooCommerce. If you need a default solution, a go-to, kind of the Swiss Army knife of e-commerce solutions, go and check out WooCommerce today. Today is going to be a great day for you. I'll see you in the next episode of Developer Tea. Bye. Kind of the last day that you can do this because you're going to get 20% off if you use the code DEVELOPERTEA at checkout. Head over to WooCommerce.com slash DEVELOPERTEA right now for 20% off. Right after this show, I'm probably going to go downstairs and boil some water and make some loose leaf tea from none other than Mad Monk Tea. I want you to go and check this out because if you've never had loose leaf tea, then you're missing out on what tea has to offer to you. Head over to MadMonkTea.com and if you use the code DEVELOPERTEA, you're going to get 15% off of your order. Mad Monk Tea is the first of my picks on this show for you. So go and check it out again. Mad Monk Tea. Use the code DEVELOPERTEA. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you will subscribe if you're interested in more discussions on things like statistics and all kinds of other things that are related to what it means to do good work as a developer. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Mad Monk Tea.