The world is analyzed and predicted by statistics!
Stories of statistics that live in everyday life, from society and culture to politics and economics.
If you know 'statistics', you can see how the world works!
A world-class statistics study for teenagers

Do you feel dizzy just by looking at the word "statistics"? From people who say they can't trust graphs on the news to those who question what statistics have to do with them, we see a wide range of attitudes toward statistics.
But we already live in a world made up of statistics.
Examples are endless: weekly chart rankings on music streaming sites, presidential elections and opinion polls, and youth unemployment graphs.

"Can You Watch the News Without Knowing Statistics?" is a book that informs us of the importance of statistics that are close to us.
To achieve this, the story unfolds through the lens of middle school student Jeong-hwa. It explores topics such as why the ranking announcements on a TV audition program became controversial, whether comparing average scores from last year and this year's CSAT is meaningful, and what sabermetric strategies utilize statistics in baseball games. The series selects material from daily news and poses a variety of questions.

By introducing statistics in this way, Junghwa directly examines the news and asks questions, making it easier to learn statistics.
Additionally, at the end of each chapter, we included questions for further consideration in the “Let’s Discuss” box.
This will be a time to think about and organize how we can apply what we have learned from reading the book in our real life.

When conducting a survey, the population refers to the entire group that is being surveyed.
A sample is a group selected instead of the entire population to be surveyed, and is a part that can represent the population.
In actual research, when the entire population is surveyed, it is called a census survey, and when a sample is selected and surveyed, it is called a sample survey.
Nowadays, it is more common to conduct sample surveys rather than census surveys.
If the representativeness of the population is well maintained, a sample survey can have the same effect as a survey of the population.
--- From "SECTION 1 Entertainment & Sports 'Why are there so many rich celebrities?'"

Compared to conventional statistics, big data differs primarily in the capacity of the data itself.
However, when utilizing big data, statistical principles are often utilized.
Basically, statistics is the process of examining data and organizing the situation or characteristics of a group into numbers.
In this process, we classify the similarities and differences between the data, that is, the material.
In this respect, the use of big data is similar to the principles of statistics.
While statistics are basically expressed in numbers, big data reveals its results in various ways, such as images or text.
--- From "SECTION 1 Entertainment & Sports 'Virtual Human Rosie Becomes CF Model'"

Let's consider the arithmetic mean of the income of all households in a country.
But what if the income of the top 5% of wealthy households is disproportionately high compared to other households? Can the arithmetic mean accurately reflect the average income of the country's citizens? In this case, understanding the characteristics of a given group solely through the arithmetic mean makes it difficult to properly understand the characteristics of its members.
We fall into the trap of the average, which is the misconception that the arithmetic mean represents the group.
--- From "SECTION 2 Society & Culture 'This year's CSAT average score, up from last year?'"

People who express hate towards foreigners and illegal immigrants often present specific data to make it seem like they are stating facts.
A typical example is the use of statistics.
There is a hidden intention behind using statistics to appear value-neutral.
However, as we have seen before, if you do not use numbers or ratios accurately in statistics, you will end up telling lies or distorting stories that are not true.
--- From "SECTION 2 Society & Culture: 'Illegal Immigrant Crimes on the Rise, Why?'"

Let's look at our country's economic growth rate. Looking at the graph on the right, we see that, except for 1998 and 2020, when the IMF foreign exchange crisis occurred, the economic growth rate has been higher than zero in all years.
In the 1990s, it was over 10%, but these days, it is generally lower than 3%.
It is true that the economic growth rate has decreased compared to the past, but this is because the size of our country's economy has grown significantly.
This is because the previous year's GDP, which serves as the denominator, has been increasing.
So, just because the economic growth rate has decreased compared to the past, it does not mean that there has been no growth.
You can see that it is growing, but its size is decreasing.
In this case, the news sometimes reports that 'economic growth is slowing down.'
--- From "SECTION 3 Politics & Economy 'Is our country's economic growth rate 1% or -1%?'"

What matters in politics is not the approval rating over a five-year period, but who won the presidential or parliamentary election and what the approval rating was at that time.
However, the information in the graph on the right only compares 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020, and Party A's approval rating has been high since 2000.
Therefore, even though Party B actually won the election, looking only at the presented graph would lead one to misunderstand that Party A received more public support at all times.
By selecting only the data that is favorable to you and removing the unfavorable data to create a graph, you can distort the statistics.
This should also be considered false information.

--- From "SECTION 3 Politics & Economy 'Will the 2016 US Presidential Election Be All Red?'"