For immediate release, April 1, 2010 For information: Alice
Tibbetts, 612-625-3889 The chocolate headline appeared in a
newspaper in 2005 and was based on a study involving only 14
people. Results from more current studies are in the news again,
just in time for the Easter candy season. How do we determine if
such health claims are credible? How do we interpret the
statistics behind headlines? When are statistics manipulated to
further an agenda? Nancy Reid, a professor of statistics at the
University of Toronto, will speak to these questions at a public
lecture, Thursday, April 22, 2010 in 175 Willey Hall, 225 19th
Avenue South at the University of Minnesota. She is the final
speaker in this season's free lecture series sponsored by the
Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA). When the
media presents findings as definitive, the public is
misinformed, she said. "Statistics are not black and white. In
reality, there is a lot of nuance, and in the most complex
problems, there is ambiguity. One numb