Lying with statistics

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

As I always tell my students:
Lying with statistics is easy; it’s telling the truth with statistics that’s hard.

22

Personally I don’t have a problem with saying “N times less” to mean “factor of N smaller.” It’s not ambiguous - at least I don’t know how else one might interpret it.

23

There was a race of 3 teams, A, B and C. They finished in that order. Team B and C are rivals. The report back in C’s home town, with no mention of the number of teams competing:

Team C finished in 3rd place while Team B finished second to last.

24

One of my personal favourites is way percentages are used - in paticular

  • % points vs a raw %
  • % increases - all too often people don’t quite realise that an increase of 200% maeans that your new number is three times the original, as opposed to “this year’s figure is 200% of last years” meaning your amount has doubled.
25

Figures don’t lie but liars figure.