ABSTRACT
In everyday contexts, new data change the way we understand and make decisions about the world at large. Although most of the chapters in this volume focus on the process of understanding statistical data in classroom or scientific reasoning contexts, the last three chapters in this volume consider how data influence how we perceive and make decisions about the real world. These three chapters represent three traditions for considering data in the real world. Chapter 15, by David Danks, presents a unifying framework for comparing models of how people make causal inferences from data. The chapters by Peter Sedlmeier (chap. 16) and Wandi Bruine de Bruin, Julie S. Downs, and Baruch Fischhoff (chap. 17) describe interventions designed to help people better understand statistical information. In the case of the Sedlmeier chapter, the statistical reasoning is domain-general. In the case of the Bruine de Bruin et al. chapter, the reasoning is in the context of making decisions about sexual behavior. Thus, all three chapters address the question of what people do when they encounter data.
