Five surprising ways you use statistics every day

According to the Oxford Living Dictionaries, a statistic is ‘a fact or piece of data obtained from a study of a large quantity of numerical data’. You might think that only scientists and mathematicians use statistics, but we all rely on statistics every day of our lives. Don’t believe us? Keep reading and you’ll discover just how much you rely on statistics every day.
 
Predicting the weather
Should you wear shorts and a cap, or throw on your rain jacket before you leave the house? If you watched the weather report the night before, and heard that there was a 50% chance of thundershowers in the late afternoon, you’ll probably take your rain jacket with you.
 
These statistics are based on studies of weather patterns and help millions of people prepare for their day. Being able to accurately predict the weather is especially important for airports, trains, busses and other forms of transport. Bad weather can cause delays or force commuters to take an alternative route.
 
Winning at sport
From cricket and netball to rugby and soccer, you’ll find statistics in every sport imaginable. They can be used to determine how an individual athlete or a whole team performs. So if you know that your team has won only 20% of their away games and you’re playing at home today, you’ll know that there’s a good chance you’ll win your match.
 
Shopping for groceries
Manufacturers and retailers gather large amounts of data on the goods the make and sell. This information not only helps them keep track of how much money they make, it also helps them predict what products to produce or stock.
 
For example, a factory that produces tinned goods might notice that there is a higher demand for baked beans in the winter. As a result, they switch to canning more baked beans in the autumn so they have enough stock to supply stores when the season changes.
 
Even your local supermarket uses statistics to track trends and make decisions. Over a period of months, they see that 25% more people buy bread on a Wednesday than any other day of the week. They decide to ask the bakery to deliver fresh bread on a Tuesday afternoon instead on Monday mornings. That way, they have enough fresh bread on their shelves for people to purchase.
 
Preparing for accidents and disease
Part of the magic of statistics is how they can be used to predict the future. This is especially important for people in the medical profession. For example, every winter the number of people suffering from flu increases sharply. If pharmacies can estimate how many people are likely to be infected, they can stock on the medicines they’ll need to treat everyone.
 
In a similar way, the traffic department uses the numbers and statistics from previous years to predict how many people will go on holiday in December. As more people travel to the coast, they know that there may be more accidents. To try and keep the number of serious accidents down, they’ll dispatch more officers to monitor busy routes and ensure drivers are following the rules of the road.
 
Insurance and marketing
These are two areas where statistics are vital. A car insurance company will need to gathers lots of data to work out how much to charge someone for insuring their car every month. So many different factors need to be taken into account, such as how long the person has been driving for, what kind of car they drive, how old their car is and how much it might cost to repair or replace it.
 
Advertisers and marketers also use statistics to determine strategies for helping businesses sell more of their products. This could be as simple as deciding what colour to make a product or how much money to spend on radio advertising. They’ll look at how well previous colours or budgets have performed and use that information make a decision.
 
From the time you wake up and decide what to wear until you brush your teeth with a toothpaste that come in a blue box, you’re surrounded by the results of people using statistics. And throughout the day, you’ll also rely on statistics to make decisions. Statistics are powerful because they can help us predict the future and that’s why it’s so important that maths students learn about them.


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