Statistical Inconsistencies and Paradoxes, BAD LOGIC, BEWARE Options

[chrishawke]

Statistics say that 45% of fatal accidents are caused by drunk driving. Therefore, you should drive while drunk as you have a lower chance of getting into a fatal accident.



Assume an unborn baby has a 50% chance of becoming either a boy or a girl. You ask a male passersby if he has any siblings, and he says he has one sibling. What are the chances of his sibling being a male?
HINT: It is NOT 1/2.

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The chances are 1/4.

A baseball stat paradox:

Suppose Mister Joe and Mister Bob are batters. Mister Joe has a record of 10 hits out of 50 pitches against left-handed pitchers and 177 hits out of 581 pitches against right-handed pitchers. On the other hand, Mister Bob has a record of hitting 105 pitches out of 410 against left-handed pitches and 45 pitches out of 140 against right-handed pitchers.

Okay. Let's do a little bit of math here.

For Joe:
LHP | 10/50 = .2000 or 20.00%
RHP | 177/581 = 30.46%
TOTAL | 187/631 = 29.63%

For Bob:
LHP | 105/410 = 25.60%
RHP | 45/140 = 32.14%
TOTAL | 150/550 = 27.27%

As we can see here, Mister Bob's hit percentage against left-handed pitches are higher than Joe's as well as his hit percentage against right-handed pitches compared to Joe's. However, when tallied up, as noted in TOTAL, Bob's hit percentage is LOWER than Joe's. These numbers do not lie. This is a paradox.

[jcdietz03]

Bob and Joe are probably not on the same baseball team b/c one gets many LHPs and the other many RHPs.

As for the coin flip problem, do you the OP have any data that shows this?

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

[Enzd]

do you the OP

Learn who people are.