[Maxion]

The depressing part is that many people actually need them removed in order to not be confused.

[nonethewiser]

But aren’t they still confused without the error bars? Or confidently incorrect? And who could blame them, when that’s the information they’re given?

It seems like the options are:

- no error bars which mislead everyone

- error bars which confuse some people and accurately inform others

[alistairSH]

Yep.

See also: Complaints about poll results in the last few rounds of elections in the US. "The polls said Hillary would win!!!" (no, they didn't).

It's not just error margins, it's an absence of statistics of any sort in secondary school (for a large number of students).

[Izkata]

After a lot of back-and-forth some years ago, we settled on a third option: If the error bars would be too big (for whatever definition of "too big" we used back then), don't show the data and instead show a "not enough data points" message. Otherwise, if we were showing the data, show it without the error bars.

[marcosdumay]

Yeah, when people remove that kind of information to not confuse people, they are aiming into making them confidently incorrect.

[ta8645]

That is baldly justifying a feeling of superiority and authority over others. It's not your job to trick other people "for their own good". Present honest information, as accurately as possible, and let the chips fall where they may. Anything else is a road to disaster.