English > ESSAY > Allen D Nease Senior High School - TOK 255Final TOK essay plan (All)

Allen D Nease Senior High School - TOK 255Final TOK essay plan

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“Statistics conceal as much as they reveal.” Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge. INTRODUCTION: Mark Twain famously said, “There are three types of lies: lies, damn li... es, and statistics.” What Twain meant by this is that the use of statistics is often in a false context. Due to this false context what is highly regarded as a stat becomes little more than a lie. In its conception a stat is a numerical value given to describe a certain data set. In conception there should be no biases or falsehood. However, this often proves untrue as stats are used out of context to hide the truth. This begs the question are the effects (whether it conceals or revels the truth) of a stat depended on how a person uses it? For the purposes of this paper we will define conceal as hindering the truth, while reveal means to demonstrate the bias free truth. Since biases are however nearly impossible to avoid statistics often conceal more than they reveal. This use of statistics can be further examined within the AoKs of Natural Sciences and Human Sciences. KNOWLEDGE CLAIM 1:  Statistics used within Natural Sciences conceal just as much information as they reveal.  While the Natural Sciences pride themselves on accuracy of information this does not translate to statistics. This is due to the way different organizations will form statistics. While the original data set from the experiments may be true the statistics derived are meant to drive only one viewpoint so only certain parameters [Show More]

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