People’s poor understanding of statistics resulted in misinformation and “fake news” spreading throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers say, as a study calls for changes to how mathematics is taught in schools.
Australian Catholic University Professor of Mathematics Education Vincent Geiger, who co-authored the research, said more needed to be done to teach students how to critically interpret statistics like those published during the pandemic.
Researchers say better statistics education is needed to prevent COVID-19 misinformation.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
He said there needed to be changes to school teaching practices to ensure students grew into adults capable of understanding and interpreting data and associated graphics.
“Mathematics and statistics were used in the media like almost never before over COVID-19,” Geiger said. “There was the use of new terms no one had ever heard about before and I don’t know if they were really clearly explained, like reproduction number (or Reff).
“What does flattening the curve actually mean? Did people understand that predictions changed because of an increase in the amount of data and its quality, not because conditions were necessarily changing?”
The research, published in the journal Educational Studies in Mathematics, identified nine different ways mathematics and statistics have been used in the media during the pandemic, analysing examples from four different countries.
They included models, predictions, causality and risk, representations and displays, data quality and strength of evidence.
The study found that educational programs needed to go beyond simple and abstract notions of probability to evaluate the meaning and strength of data.
“Within school mathematics curricula, statistics are often taught as a separate topic from mathematics, yet in the media items, these knowledge bases are often intertwined or blended,” Geiger said.
He said schools also needed to do more to help students scrutinise whether sources were credible, and the media should provide links to original sources of statistics and information quoted in articles.
Geiger said unless key skills were addressed at school, there was a real danger that students would grow up to be adults at risk of accepting “fake news”.
Professor Catherine Bennett, chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, said incorrect interpretations of COVID-19 statistics had led to misinformation through the pandemic.
One example was misinterpretation of vaccine effectiveness data. While raw data might show a higher raw number of deaths and infections among the vaccinated population when most people have been vaccinated, the rate of infection and death in unvaccinated people is still higher.
“The numbers may appear simple, but they’re not, they’re what we would call composite variables,” she said.
Bennett said people should defer to the experts in the field to explain data and not necessarily attempt to draw conclusions from statistics for themselves.
“As an epidemiologist will tell you, our use of biostatistics is embedded within years of training and that’s why you have specialists,” she said.
Geiger said some of the recent changes to the national curriculum would help improve data literacy, for example the inclusion of statistical investigations and probability experiments.
“There needs to be more focus on interpreting authentic uses of mathematics and statistics in real-world contexts such as Australian Bureau of Statistics data, rather than contrived tasks such as word problems,” he said.
“There also needs to be greater focus on how to make decisions based on mathematical and statistical evidence. Young people need the capability to critically scrutinise material they read – including that which contains claims, opinions and arguments backed by data.”
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.
Most Viewed in National
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article
