More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
“While statistics are not hard to understand, they are even easier to misunderstand,” Ramos said. “Fortunately, concepts in statistics are grounded in intuition and rationality. So, a basic but thoughtful introduction to these concepts can help people understand their own thinking better.”
At the 2025 Joint Statistical Meetings in Nashville, Tennessee, a market-research and survey company solicited questions from attendees to include in a nationwide survey given to a representative sample of the U.S. population. Ramos and his co-author, Samuel Anyaso-Samuel, postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, submitted two questions that were used in this survey: “How much do you understand about statistics and p-values?” and “How often would you base decisions on reported statistics if you understood it better?” Ramos and Anyaso-Samuel analyzed the responses to these questions for this study.
Of the 1,000 people surveyed, one-quarter reported that they had no understanding of statistics, while 37% reported limited familiarity. Slightly more than one-quarter said they had learned some statistics in school.
This does not mean that people do not believe statistics matter, Ramos said. Nine out of 10 participants said they would use statistics more if they possessed more understanding.
