“100% Of People Who Read This Essay Say That It Is The Best Essay Ever Written” is what I would say if I was trying to misrepresent this essay. This claim is doubtful, even downright wrong, but for some reason this representation of statistics is a marketing trick used by seemingly reputable companies. This bending of the truth by misrepresenting something is seen in everyday life, mainly in marketing and media, and has a profound effect on the perception of products and brands. The ability to describe something without actually explaining it is mildly disreputable in some instances, and dangerous in others.
Describing as an IB command term is defined as “[to] Give a detailed account or picture of a situation, event, pattern or process.” Explanation is defined as “[to] give a detailed account including reasons or causes.” (UWW). Because these two words are IB command terms and are written in this IB-prescribed title, I think it is important to view them through these definitions.
The prescribed title is a question, which asks to what extent do “you” agree with this claim, so I know that my answer will be somewhat subjective, and that it can be that I wholly agree, wholly disagree, or something in between. The meat of the question, the quote, has some wording that needs to be highlighted. Mainly that the two main words are IB command terms. Secondly, the operation, which is ‘there is a sharp line’ means there is no grey area between the two concepts. With the main points covered, my answer is that I agree with the prescribed title. “Description” and “explanation” are different actions, and there is a sharp line between them.
But a good essay never ends at the thesis, and it would be irresponsible to not give an explanation. The way to best show the difference between a description and an explanation is to try and isolate them and show that just having an explanation is not the same as just having a description, because in the real world these two words are used in tandem, and to have both of them is to have a complete understanding of a concept. So, to illustrate this I will ask and answer the question: how does the lack of an explanation affect the understanding of a concept?
“Eight out of ten doctors recommend Colgate over competing brands.” It was a big marketing campaign, aimed at telling people just how favored Colgate brand toothpaste was above other brands. (DeJohn) I remember it from my childhood, in the personal care aisle begging my parents to get Colgate because it was so well received by doctors. I didn’t think there was any chance that Colgate was being misleading.
This is an example of misleading statistics. They give a description of the data, that eight out of ten doctors recommend Colgate, but they don’t explain the statistics. They barely explain anything at all. They could have done almost anything to get that data. Doctors? They don’t define what they mean by “doctors.” They could be polling doctors that have PhDs in Anthropology, or Biology, or anything else besides Doctors of Dental Surgery. Or they could have hand picked doctors who would say that their toothpaste was good. There’s no guarantee that this was an independent study. They don’t say what the doctors recommend Colgate for. They could be saying doctors recommend Colgate as a soap, or as a rust remover. They didn’t specify what they recommended Colgate for.
To find evidence that description and explanation are different, I think that it is valid to look into what it is like to not have them in relation to a concept. This Colgate example for instance is where explanation is missing. Colgate gives a description of what their doctors are saying, that eight out of ten of them recommend Colgate, but they don’t explain this number. There are no accounts of reasons or causes that constitute an explanation, just the numbers themselves. As far as what brand of toothpaste you buy, this misleading statistic is relatively harmless. But if drug companies marketed Advil to hemophiliacs saying that it “positively affects blood,” then real harm could occur. It is important to have both a description and explanation. When there is no explanation there is a limited understanding of the concept.
Another example of how a lack of explanation doesn’t allow a full understanding of a concept is survivorship bias, which is the logical problem where we only look at data that we know, overlooking anything that hasn’t made it through some kind of selection. We only look at things that “survived.” As David McRaney writes, “survivorship bias is your tendency to focus on survivors instead of whatever you would call a non-survivor depending on the situation. Sometimes that means you tend to focus on the living instead of the dead, or on winners instead of losers, or on successes instead of failures.” (McRaney) The survivorship bias affects our perception of what it means to succeed, and we focus on only those who have succeeded, and not those who failed. Connecting it back to the prescribed title, there is a sharp difference in these cases where survivorship bias is involved. To guide this discussion I ask the question, What is the difference between explaining and describing success?
The quote from McRaney is from an article on survivorship bias, and it details the beginning of this term, which comes from the United States Air Force. During World War II more and more planes were getting shot down in bombing runs, and a team of statisticians were put together to try and find a way to better protect the aircraft. Mainly this team looked at pictures of returned planes, and tallied where these planes were getting hit the most, and informed the Air Force where to thicken the armor. Despite many peoples first assumptions, the team didn’t suggest that the armor be thicker in the places where there were more bullet holes. In fact, they suggested better armor for all spots that had no bullet holes. What most people overlooked was the fact that all the planes that came back were survivors. They came back specifically because the planes were shot in those places, and the ones that didn’t come back were shot in the places the survivors weren’t, specifically in the tail of the plane, near the nose cone, and the middle of the wings.
Survivorship bias can be very useful when looking at celebrities and other success stories. We hear about how an actor made it big, but we don’t hear about when hundreds of actors fail. We always hear about the successes, but the failures are not known to us. This applies to lotteries, business ventures, contest winners, and any other place where the phrase “it could be you” is said. The difference between explaining success and describing it is night and day. I can describe that there can be a lottery winner, but explaining the odds of winning is completely different.
There is a difference between explaining and describing and it mainly boils down to how much information is being given. “Description” is giving a detailed account of something, and in practice it is giving a face value account, where the only things described are readily noticeable. Explanation is finding a deeper definition, including contextual information and causes, and taking them into account. A description provides the What, Where, and When and an explanation provides the Why and the How. It is in this way that the two words are different.
It would be wrong to say conclusively that there is no convergence between the definitions of “describe” and “explain.” Even the IB definitions begin with the same wording, “[To] Give a detailed account...” (UWW) There is an intersection of these two definitions. They both give accounts, or portray information, about whatever the subject is. There is a basis of giving accounts that are ingrained in both of the words. Description and explanation are not wholly divorced from one another. I would say that a good explanation requires a definition. Like making a cake –you can have flour or a description by itself, but you can’t have a cake -or explanation, without it.
This topic has connections to many ways of knowing: mainly reason, intuition, and language. It undoubtedly has much to do with language. Some of the arguments made are about the exact definition of words. Intuition is used whenever talking about a speculative subject, and reason is used to find out the difference between having a description or explanation.
It is a good habit to look at situations in the real world and see if there is a whole explanation, and not just a description. Think inquisitively about statistics and don’t trust “It could be you” slogans, because more than likely there isn’t a whole explanation, just a description being given. These topics highlight the contrast between describing and explaining. They show that there is a difference between the two, that you can’t get the whole picture by just describing something. To be truly informed, an explanation must be given.
(McRaney, David), “Survivorship Bias” You Are Not So Smart, May 2013, https://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/
(DeJohn, Jaclyn), “4 Out of 5 Marketers Recommend This: Lessons on Statistical Interpretations”, Target Marketing, October 2016. https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/lessons-statistical-interpretations/
(UWW) “Command Terms from the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program/Across Disciplines”, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 2016 https://www.uww.edu/Documents/colleges/coeps/academics/18%20Command%20Terms%20from%20the%20International%20Baccalaureate%20January%2015-16%20workshop.pdf