[Dean's World] Dean: The Problem With Statistics...

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Posted by Dean:
The Problem With Statistics...
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1194039533.shtml


   ...is not that numbers lie, it's that people can--innocently or not
   innocently--misinterpret the numbers.

   So what do you think: [1]is this piece slamming Giuliani's recent
   statistics on prostate cancer fair, or unfair?

   Actually there's no way of knowing at all without being presented with
   more data, is there?

   This is where I hope the internet will start to evolve to do a better
   job: it would be easier to know what to do with something like this if
   we had *all* the figures in front of us. Why wouldn't Mr. Robinson,
   City Journal, or the Giuliani campaign itself all be pointing to the
   *original data* in a web-accessible format? Really that's my biggest
   beef of all with politics and the internet: it's so easy to throw
   around facts, but unless you have concrete sources to go by (and some
   are out there, granted, just not enough) it's hard to know who to
   believe. It's also hard to tell a liar from someone who's just plain
   wrong vs. someone who might just possibly be right. How do you tell?

   Right now all I can say is that while I want a national health care
   reform bill, I want something that *does not* destroy private
   insurance, and that allows citizens not just freedom of choice in
   doctors, but freedom of choice in health insurance *systems*.

References

   1. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/giulianis_bogus_diagnosis.html