Stubborn people!

heretolearn_2 · 17 January 2012 at 11:52AM

I'm openminded, it's everyone else who is stubborn, lol :-)

There is rarely one right answer or one right opinion or one right approach.

It gets annoying when people are stubborn over factual things though - it's usually out of not understanding it fully, and then even if they do come to understand it they can't bear to admit they were wrong!
Maths is one area I simply do not bother arguing with anymore. Most people are so illiterate when it comes to numbers/maths/statistics that they simply can't grasp where they are going wrong. I've only got a little maths O Level, not particularly advanced with maths but I've used it a lot for work and I get shocked at how little people understand important concepts. But they don't, and nothing you say can explain it for them, so I don't bother now.

I spent about a week arguing with a friend over the listening statistics for a radio station once. His favourite station announced it had the highest listeners figures for London stations. He then told me this meant most people in London listen to it...god that drove me nuts for a week trying to get him to understand why this wasn't true. He never did get it, even with the aid of a tube of smarties as a visual aid. (see...there are more blue smarties than any other colour, but most of the smarties are not blue...). His only response in the end was 'oh people can prove anything with statistics, you are just being clever, all I know is it says it's the most popular station so most people listen to it.' And he would just shout me down when I tried to bring up the fact that national stations like Radio 1 are not even included in that chart as they don't count as 'London stations'. And he's actually very intelligent normally...

heretolearn_2 · 17 January 2012 at 11:56AM

Actually, never mind stubborn people, thick people are excruciating to deal with as well. But you just have to accept that they can't help it, unlike the intelligent but stubborn ones.