# Data is dead - No one knows anything - Media "Experts" are con artists **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 10, 2016, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-is-dead-no-one-knows-anything-media-experts-are-con-artists/771384 "2016-11-10T18:23:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-is-dead-no-one-knows-anything-media-experts-are-con-artists/771384/21 "2016-11-13T16:50:21Z")
Don’t worry, Lore can still be reassembled. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-is-dead-no-one-knows-anything-media-experts-are-con-artists/771384/22 "2016-11-13T17:44:36Z")
To be deliberately contrarian: > [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > I think it is commendable the Democrats see themselves as the party of women Sexist. > [@](#): > > Hispanics Racist > [@](#): > > LBGTQ Heterophobic. > [@](#): > > blacks Racist again. Again, being deliberately contrarian here. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-is-dead-no-one-knows-anything-media-experts-are-con-artists/771384/23 "2016-11-13T18:21:34Z")
People forget that polls were pretty wrong last election too, but in Obama’s favor. Nobody cares when the numbers are wrong as long as the correct person wins. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-is-dead-no-one-knows-anything-media-experts-are-con-artists/771384/24 "2016-11-14T19:46:52Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > You have to take data and experts for what they’re actually saying. > > Using political polls as an example, how often does a media source actually show the margin of error? I mostly watch CNN and they often omitted the margin of error entirely when showing graphics that said Hillary 48% and Trump 44%. They also tended to assume that it represented current information. The other important facet of a statistical survey that is almost never reported in the press is the Confidence Level (CL). While margin of error (MoE) is exactly as **dracoi** explained, CL says “the inverse of this number is the frequency that this survey will be completely wrong”. Given the general MoE range of 3% and the pool size of 1,500 on the polls I saw, the CL would have been 95%. A CL of 95% means that 5% of the time the poll will be so far off as to be useless. Five percent is one in twenty, not exactly rare. Another piece the public never gets is the ‘story telling’ aspect. Numbers tell a story, but not always an obvious one. A large part of an analyst’s job is to interpret the numbers and tell the story. I heard one prominent analyst say that his polls showed Trump winning, but he thought the numbers represented a “normal” election. He saw Trump as an “abnormal” candidate and adjusted his numbers downward. Others ‘normalized’ their poll results based on the assumption of a larger than normal voter turnout. They read the story wrong, but that is what was released to the press. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2016, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-is-dead-no-one-knows-anything-media-experts-are-con-artists/771384/25 "2016-11-14T21:14:29Z")
If I roll a 20 at the D&D table, a 5% chance, that doesn’t mean data is dead. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-is-dead-no-one-knows-anything-media-experts-are-con-artists/771384.md?page=1)