There are many
great writeups on E2 about
statistics, and I won't
reiterate all that information. I'm only here to
repeat the theme, so you all don't
forget it: STATISTICS ARE LIES. ALL OF THEM.
Anything posing as a
fact that has a
percentage of people in it is a lie. They
interviewed twenty rednecks to come up with that number, which supposedly
represents the entire country. Anything posing as fact that
attempts to
catalog the
opinions of
large groups of people is a lie. Neither
you nor
I have an opinion that can be
accurately stated in
multiple-choice; not that they
interviewed you or I to get that
statistic.
Don't believe anything they say about
mass marketing,
customer demographics,
trends,
political opinions, ANYTHING. Those are
companies talking, and they're either SELLING that information for money or
flat-out producing it for money. Those are the demographics, trends, and opinions (of
politicians, not people) that they
want you to have. It's all
lies. All of it. And they'll do
anything to make it sound like
facts, since people are
so thirsty for facts lately.
An
example:
Detroit city is now officially
recorded with the
Census Bureau as having
less than 1 million citizens, for the first time in a long time. In the
address list the C.B. gave to the
City, they showed ONE ADDRESS for
Harbor Town, an area with a known population of
over one hundred thousand--more than almost all of the
suburbs. Why miss so many in Harbor Town? Oh, well,
THEY'RE POOR, that's why.
So just
do me that favor: Never ever EVER trust a
statistic, especially if the
guy telling it to you is obviously a
bad guy. My more general rule for myself is
never trust the truth coming from an evil person, but you can just
stick with avoiding statistics if you don't like
dubbing people "Evil"--it doesn't
bother me tho!
P.S. Regarding "
scientific ideals": If I didn't know
science, I wouldn't think
statistics were evil, and no, I meant all of them. THE WAY STATISTICS ARE DONE TODAY involves some of the
world's most screwed-up science and
procedure. Most statistics that are
widely disseminated have been so
tampered with and
seeded that they have a
better chance of being dead wrong than they do of being partially right. Go read something about
how they get statistics, and then come back and tell me it's at all "scientific". --PD
P.S.S. Just cause
I have to: I'll put my
cynicism in the way of
anything I like, at least until I
meet something that can even get through it.