Fake Math: Analyzing the Misuse of Quantitative Concepts

From the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz to the White House, quantitative errors are made and put forth. This course will present, discuss, and challenge students to analyze misused quantitative concepts. These errors will be taken from misapplied logic; inappropriate use of numbers; graphical inaccuracies and manipulations; cognitive illusions; self-fulfilling prophecies; the wrong-but-often-relied-upon Law of Small Numbers; conditional probability; correlation, confounding, and causality; hazards of data mining; circular reasoning; and basic misuses of statistics. Introductory concepts of classical logic, probability, and statistics will be presented and reviewed, and examples of their misuse will be discussed and evaluated.