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 15:36:38 GMT
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Viewed:
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154 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > 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.
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 checking (because they "heard it before" so it "must be
true" because "why would people repeat something that wasn't true?")
Clearer? Wide repetition doesn't increase likelyhood of falsehood. It DOES
increase likelyhood of uncritical acceptance.
1 - the non critical thinkers among us, which in todays mixed economy we
have a lot of out there in the world... some even come to visit us here in
this backwater we fondly call off-topic.debate
++Lar
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: On the veracity of statistics in general
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| (...) 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 (...) (23 years ago, 19-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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