How to Avoid Statistics That Feel Overly Precious, Right?

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If you hear something like 22.46% of Americans believe X, how is it possible to know to two decimal places what an entire country thinks? There's no way that every single person in the country was polled for their opinion on this thing. So a really important thing is to kind of question the denominator. If we're saying, I don't know, one in two Americans eat a ham sandwich every day, who was polled? And sometimes what you find is that the denominator, the people who constitute that research, all come from one specific demographic group such as Midwestern lorry drivers.

Whenever we have a question – about ourselves or the world around us – it can be helpful to visualize our answer in order to really understand it. But how do you conceptualize something as big as inequality, as complex as grief, or as silly as your probability of correctly guessing today’s Wordle? For data journalist Mona Chalabi, the answer is through data – and drawing. You’ve probably seen Mona’s illustrations on the internet. She’s known for interpreting data in a way that makes you GET it. In today’s episode, she explains how anyone could use analysis to answer their most personal questions – from whether or not to have a breakup to how many friends you should have. For the text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts