Therefore, when you see statistics that claim to accurately describe a particular group, remember that depending on the sampling method used, it’s likely that the statistic is describing some subset of the group in question, rather than the group itself.
However, getting a truly representative sample is almost impossible for time, money, and other practical reasons. No conclusion that “sixty-seven percent of the American people are against” something or other should be read without the lingering question, Sixty-seven percent of which American people?”įor any statistic to be worth its salt, it should come from a representative sample of the group about which it is describing.
What the reader of the reports must remember is that the battle is never won. “The operation of a poll comes down in the end to a running battle against sources of bias, and this battle is conducted all the time by all the reputable polling organizations. “To be worth much, a report based on sampling must use a representative sample, which is one from which every source of bias has been removed.” So instead of believing every statistic you see or rejecting numbers entirely, learn the language of statistics and the common ways in which it is misused and abused so that you can recognize when you might be at risk for being duped. While some of these facts and figures may be valid, often they are incorrect or misleading ways to convince us of the agenda of some person or organization. In our “science-backed” society, we are inundated with statistics. “The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify.” A great reminder of the basic principles of statistics and how they are often violated in the data we use and see in work, the news, and our personal lives.īuy this book on Amazon(Highly recommend)Īccess My Searchable Collection of 100+ Book Notes Key Takeaways Learn and be cautious with statistics
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