Subject:
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Re: On the veracity of statistics in general
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 19 Oct 2001 14:31:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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1059 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Here's my thinking. Statistics have a tendency to self perpetuate. We all
> know that to be true, Someone quotes them and gets cited and before you know
> it they are enshrined as gospel. Statistics also have a tendency to get
> cited out of context in order to make various points. Take the
> healthcare/crime statistics about various crimes/causes of deaths/injuries
> that are being bandied about here. Different factions here are citing the
> same statistics to prove different things.
>
> Many organisations are highly political. How likely is it that they always
> rigorously validate every statistic they hear, especially if it happens to
> fit their preconceived notions? How EASY is it to rigorously validate a
> statistic anyway, if it's a statistic about a closed society?
>
> That's why I take UN statistics, in particular, with larger grains of salt
> than most, because the UN is more highly political than just about any
> organization ever in existance. I'd say people that don't use similar
> scepticism are naiive or foolish or deliberately misconstruing things for
> their own ends.
I agree with all of this, but even still tend to accept statistics unless I
have a reason to not. I suspect that the UN rarely lies in it's reporting of
statistics. I think accidental inaccuracies are more worrisome. In the page
Scott recently cited that compared death rates among nations, I suspect that
data was the result of fairly non-rigorous survey. Maybe even conducted by the
individual nations rather than by a central authority at the UN. (This
methodological info might have been present on another page, I didn't go
digging.) If so, then the validity of the numbers from nation to nation is
fairly questionable given differences in national attitude, collection
approaches, reliability, etc.
> The number of times a statistic is cited in the media, while an interesting
> statistic in itself, has no bearing on how accurate the statistic itself is
> unless the fact checking process behind it is rigorous. And we KNOW the
> media are far from rigorous at checking facts.
I would sooner expect the media to fabricate statistics than I would the UN.
Surely if anyone is more politicized than the UN it's "news" sources.
> Unfortunately, it DOES have
> bearing on how believable a statistic is because things that are repeated
> tend to be remembered as true by a large fraction of people, who tend not to
> think critically.
Wait, it sounds like you're saying a statistic is more likely to be false if
it's remembered by the general public. That's certainly not so.
Chris
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: On the veracity of statistics in general
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| (...) If that's what you think I am saying I must not have said it very clearly. All I am trying to say is that the more often a statistic is said, the more likely it is for members of a certain large class of people (1) to accept it as true without (...) (25 years ago, 19-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | On the veracity of statistics in general
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| I was doing some Googletrolling with various search keywords, looking for some scholarly work on the accuracy of UN statistics. It's a relatively tough search... I ran across this tidbit: (URL) this is anecdotal of course, but there is a lot of (...) (25 years ago, 18-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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