Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists
From Amazon.com
When it comes to thinking about statistics, there are four kinds of people: awestruck, naive, cynical, and vital. According to sociologist Joel Best, the vast majority of people are naive (yes, you too probably suffer from a mild case of innumeracy), and the result is mutant statistics, guesswork, and poor policy decisions. “Terrible statistics live on,” writes Best in this highly reachable book, “they take on lives of their own.” Take this one: a psychologist’s estimate that perhaps 6 percent of priests were at some point sexually attracted to childish people was transformed owing to a chain of errors into the “fact” that 6 percent of priests were pedophiles. Then there was the one about eating disorders. An original estimate that 150,000 women were anorexic, made by concerned activists, mutated into 150,000 women dying from the disorder annually (the truth: about 70 women a year). But these two mutant statistics have been published and passed along as facts for years, enduring long after the truth has been pointed out.
In an try to turn people into vital thinkers, Best presents three questions to question about all statistics and the four basic sources of terrible ones. He shows how excellent statistics go terrible; why comparing statistics from different time periods, groups, etc. is akin to incorporation apples and oranges; and why surveys do small to clarify people’s feelings about complex social issues. Random samples, it turns out, are rarely random enough. He also clarifies what all the hoopla is over how the poverty line is measured and the opinion poll is counted. What is the “dark figure”? How many men were really at the Million Man Development? How is it possible for the mean returns per person to rise at the same time the mean hourly wage is falling? And how do you discern the truth behind stat wars? Learn it all here before you rush to judgment over the next small nugget of statistics-based truth you read. –Lesley Reed
Buy Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists
No related posts.
So Joel Best tells us what many of us already know, that statistic and polls lie.
But there are a fantastic deal of non-thinking political puppets out there who cannot fathom this fact and accept the lies. They refuse to believe that surveys and polls are as dishonest as the ideologies behind those who make them and are usually more corruptible than our politicians who use them.
Anyone who sees a Dan Rather, Ted Kennedy, Charles Schumer, 60 Minute, Katie Couric, Al Franken or any other liberals poll number and believes them to be honest and balanced or honest has to be as gullible as a five year ancient or just plain stupid.
Any poll, any question, any set of questions can be manipulated to produce the consequences that the questioner desires and once spoken on a Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer or other left leaning TV spin shows the press repeats it as if gospel and if it helps some deviant liberal cause it becomes truth by repetition.
It reminds me of two statements of the Hitler regime: tell a lie loud enough, often enough and long enough and the people will eventually believe it to be right. And then, isn’t it fortunate for rulers that the people do not reflect?
Sound perfectly appropriate for anyone who puts their faith in damn lies, polls and statistics.
Rating: 4 / 5
This book is not as in depth as I had expected. The main point of this book seems to be that advocacy groups produce fake statistics in peacefulness to promote their cause. Some points were fascinating, such as how gun control groups carefully word their polling questions so that it will appear more people favor gun control. It just seemed that the same points were gone over over and over again.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book delves into a few of the difficulties an individual would face if he or she tried to get an accurate count of and eventually make conclusions about a phenomenon. Best gives the reader plenty of examples from the social sciences which demonstrate some of the problems encountered when trying to clarify, measure, and eventually make conclusions about various issues.
Best adequately picks up the subject matter just before Darrell Huff’s timeless text, How to Lie with Statistics, starts. Like Huff, Best argues that people have incentives to place numbers in front of us (Huff refers to this as axe-grinding), and it behooves us to know who is putting the statistic in front of us, why they chose to place this statistic before us, and most importantly, just how they derived this statistic.
Because proponents (and opponents) of an issue, whom Best describes as ‘Advocates’, can control the way a statistic is generated and presented, we must closely scrutinize the numbers before us so that we can ‘untangle the few facts from the various fictions’. Toward this end, the book gives the reader some very caring questions he or she can question when attempting to interpret a descriptive (summary) statistic.
The matter-of-fact utility of Best’s text is not solely limited to issues in the social sciences. One could easily apply Best’s argument to, for example, the ongoing environmental debate. As such, this book is a vital element in developing vital thinking skills that can be applied in all areas both personal and professional.
Finally, although this text focuses exclusively on descriptive statistics, limiting itself to contentious and controversial topics in the social sciences, readers should take note that Mr. Best is not presenting a really original and comprehensive treatment of the subject matter. For example, David S. Moore, author of the text Statistics, Concepts and Controversies, provides a concise, yet rigorous, entertaining and reachable treatment of the same subject matter- including a wider range of examples culled from the fields of education, social and medical sciences, all in the first fifty pages of his text.
Rating: 4 / 5
I teach statistics and investigate methods to both undergraduates and graduate students, and am always on the lookout for news articles, advertisements, and the like that illustrate any poor and improper uses of statistics in the “real world” in peacefulness to get students to recognize them more easily when confronted by them. So it was with fantastic expectation that I came to this book. And I would have to say that I was not disappointed in the statistical points raised. They are all right on the mark. Though, as I read owing to example after example of the misuse of statistics and statistical thinking, I started to notice that the bulk of them were made by liberals. The “subtext” message that was appearance across, intended or not, is that only liberals use shoddy statistics to additional their political agendas. I bought the book originally with the hope that I could use it as a supplementary text for my students, but because of this perceived bias I won’t.
Rating: 2 / 5
If you have no backround in statistics and you tend to believe the numbers you see in the newspapers or on TV, then this book is a must for you. It offers a wealth of examples and explanations. (I would give it 5 stars for such readers.) On the other hand if you are already skeptical and have some knowledge of statistical methods you may find this book slow reading. Still it may have some value for you because it tells the tale behind some of the frequently cited statistics that is fascinating to read even if you know the statistics cannot be right. (3 stars.)
Rating: 4 / 5