How to work out whether bacon sandwiches are harmful

Format: Lessons

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Language/s: English

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Resource Link: View the Lesson
Short Description:

The headline said there is a 20% greater risk of getting bowel cancer if you eat bacon sandwiches! Are they right?

Key Concepts addressed:

• 2-13 Relative measures of effects can be misleading

Details

We’re used to newspaper headlines which aim to shock us with eye-catching numbers. But how worried should we actually be by statistics such as this? Professor David Spiegelhalter, the expert speaker in the videos in this pack of resources, loves analysing headlines to find out what if any truth there is in them! Using a straightforward numerical approach he shows us how to work out what is really being said so we can decide for ourselves what the risk is in eating bacon sandwiches – and whether we need to stop eating them or not.

Through watching David’s video clips and working through some of the resources, students will be sensitised to the need to dig a bit deeper and not simply believe all that they hear.