Page 188 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 6

CPS1868 Jo R.
ratings, enthralling more than 600,000 viewers weekly, in a country of only 5
million people, not including reruns and streaming.
A central part of the series was the numerous previously unseen and
creative ways of presenting and demonstrating various topics from statistics.
The difference between people’s perception of what randomness should look
like and actual randomness was demonstrated by throwing hundreds of bright
yellow rubber ducks into a frozen diving pool (figure 1) highlighting the
difference between ‘evenly distributed’ and ‘unpredictable’. The topic of polls
was demonstrated using plastic Playmobil figurines and a cement mixer as a
randomizing machine (figure 2), and the fundamental idea of regression
analyses explained in a 60 second animation short, likening it to “walking the
dog” (figure 3). The animation made the rounds on internet, ending up in
among others the opinion pages of The New York Times (3). The animation
has since been copied by National Geographic Channel in their 2014 remake
of Cosmos hosted by internationally renowned science communicator Neil
deGrasse Tyson.
The maths and stats series rocketed host Prof Jo Røislien into the
Norwegian mainstream, becoming a household name appearing alongside
rockstars, actors and other celebrities on talk shows and other TV and radio
shows, and magazine interviews. The TV series was sold to Sweden, Finland
and Denmark, and has since ended up in classrooms throughout Scandinavia,
as well as scientific conferences worldwide. Clips from the series has hundreds
of thousands of views on YouTube, and has been the blueprint for
Scandinavian science communication for years.

4. Discussion and Conclusion
Film is an underexplored medium for explaining statistics. In the current
media landscape where film is the dominating form of communication in the
public domain this cannot be ignored. Through well thought-out visuals even
complicated topics from statistics and quantitative research methodology
can be turned into engaging films, teaching both school kids and the general
public how to read and interpret quantitative information and statistical
analyses.
There is nothing people care more about than other people. This easy-
to-grasp phenomenon is often presented as a problem when discussing the
dissemination of statistics, which deals with populations and groups rather
than individuals. However, the need for repetition, the need for n>1 in order
for something to even be statistics, can easily be turned into an asset rather
than a hindrance. In the rubber ducks demonstration of randomness (Figure
1), the Playmobil figurines for demonstrating polls (Figure 2) and the
animation short on regression analyses (Figure 3) the need for n>1 is actually
at the core of what drives the film sequences.

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