You should respond to at least two of your peers

Statistics and How it is Important to my Everyday Life

Stephanie Alvarez

St. Thomas University

STA-2023-AP1

Professor Suarez

Due 03/16/2023

Statistics and How it is Important to my Everyday Life

Statistics is the study of collecting, organizing, summarizing and presenting information in the form of data to answer questions. Automatically when I think of statistics I think of conversations where I have used this term. For example, I may be having a conversation with someone and they state a cat’s mouth is cleaner than a dog’s mouth. In this case, I would come back and say, “well statistics show 80% of dogs and cats will acquire a form of dental disease in their lifetime.” This makes my argument stronger because I’m confirming based on data sets that both are at risk for dental disease. Thus further proving my argument that both cats and dogs are equally at risk for bad dental hygiene. When I think of the word statistics, I also think of populations and probability of things. The next term is statistical thinking. Statistical thinking is rational thinking to make decisions based on data collected. This to me is similar to evidence based practice. In nursing we have to think prior to doing things based on data collected from previous experience and studies in our field. We go in our minds to think and forecast prior to taking action based on the data we have in our head that we need to go through prior to treating our patients.

How statistics is used in my daily life

Now that I have gone over what I think statistics to be, I will now go over how statistics is important to me in everyday life and how it is used in my life. The main two sources where I use statistics in everyday life comes down to budgeting, entertainment and future employment. Everything I watch and view online is being analyzed by Netflix or Amazon so that they know how to market better to different audiences and so they know specifically how to target me through my algorithm through means of advertisements and suggested searches, etc. When it comes down to budgeting, I constantly try to forecast the months ahead. I do this by taking in the numbers I bring home after taxes from my employment and then I split this up into predicted grocery expenses and bills. After this I am able to estimate a good amount to place into my savings every time I get paid. I also use statistics when it comes to future employment opportunities. For example my new goal when applying to jobs is to stay away from HCA for-profit hospital systems. I do this based on researching nurse to patient ratios. I also base this off some of my own personal experiences where I have had up to 14 patients in an Emergency Room. A union study found HCA staffing levels were below average in 19 of the 20 states where it provided care in 2020 (Criss ., 2021). Another article showed that by the year 202