A recent study by Yale professors found that people’s ability to do mathematics computations got worse when the result went against the person’s political ideology. This was based on a randomized experiment in which people were given the same basic computation, but some were given the question in a politically neutral context and others were given the same computation in a context in which the correct answer went against their political ideology. The difference between the proportion of people who got the question wrong in a ‘neutral’ context and those who got the question wrong in a ‘political’ context was reported to be “statistically significant.” a. Briefly explain what “statistically significant” means in this context.

b. Would it be appropriate for the news media to report that the political context caused the poor computational results? Explain.