It’s clear that if there is a crisis in Australia, it affects both men and women, boys and girls. So what can be done to boost reading?
  • Ilandar@lemmy.todayEnglish
    71·
    3 months ago

    The main thing is the little black lines – the “confidence interval” – a statistical measure of uncertainty that can be used when showing the average value of data from a survey (or other type of research).

    And what this means, which I have confirmed with the ABS, is that the reading rates are statistically the same for males and females within all generations with the exception of gen X.

    Is this correct? I haven’t studied statistics since high school so I am completely clueless, but it doesn’t make sense based on my rudimentary understanding of what a confidence interval is supposed to do. The confidence intervals overlap, but they are not identical. Doesn’t that mean that reading rates could be statistically the same, but not that they are statistically the same?

    Anyway, I also found it interesting that men read more magazines than women now too, considering it was historically the other way around and that many men actually believed its existence as a societal norm was an example of their superior rational minds.

    • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      Yes, it means could be the same, not are the same. It does mean they are confident (95% confident, I assume, I’m not clicking through to the study) that the rates are different for men and women in Gen X

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        It does mean they are confident that the rates are different for men and women in Gen X

        Umm, surely not? If the confidence intervals overlap it means that they are not confident that the rates are different, doesn’t it? Of course, it also does not mean that they can say they are confident that the reading rates are the same.

        So the statistically sound way of saying it is that the null hypothesis is that reading rates are the same, and their study has failed to reject the null hypothesis.

      • cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        If you want to be precise, overlapping intervals mean that we lack evidence to assert that the means are statistically different for our chosen confidence level. This is often simplified to the statement that they are statistically the same.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      Read 100 last year and at 25 now this year. Lower now since no longer have a job that let’s me read.

      But I have listen to 25 so far of audiobooks, which is beating last years count of 24 total.

      • Nath@aussie.zoneMEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago
        1. Ralph Lister’s Skyhold series - Really great fun
        2. Devoured all of Honor Harrington by David Weber in about 3 months. It was all I could do not to just start them again I wanted more!
        3. Kevin J Anderson’s Hidden Empire series. A really interesting concept of an antagonist alien species. I liked them.
        4. Julie Kagawa’s Talon books - a fun bit of Urban Fantasy about dragons that shape shift into human form and try to live among us. I’m probably not its target demographic (but I like middle school and teen books more than I’m probably meant to), but I’d read these again.
        5. Currently reading Naomi Novik’s Telemere series and I’m 100% hooked. It’s more dragons, but this time set in the Napolionic wars.
  • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    since His Lordship’s ADHD diagnosis he’s stopped fighting himself and now chiefly audiobooks. His “reading” intake has upped significantly.