Jul 11, 2016 08:01 PM
How statistics are twisted to obscure public understanding
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-statistics-are...erstanding
EXCERPT: Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli the famous remark: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’ In every industry, from education to healthcare to travel, the generation of quantitative data is considered important to maintain quality through competition. Yet statistics rarely show what they seem.
If you look at recent airline statistics, you’ll think that a far higher number of planes are arriving on schedule or early than ever before. But this appearance of improvement is deceptive. [...] This example of airlines twisting meaning – and, consequently, public perception – might be irritating, but it is by no means the only industry where semantic manipulation of statistics is found. [...] in recent years the competition among universities has become so intense that several have admitted to dishonestly manipulating the stats. [...] Similar problems plague the healthcare system in the United States.
[...] the sociologist Joel Best argues that we ought to avoid calling statistics ‘lies’, and instead educate ourselves so that we can question how and why statistical data are generated. [...] The numbers themselves – unless purposefully falsified – cannot lie, but they can be used to misrepresent....
Businesses have worked to cut ‘public’s right to know’
http://www.futurity.org/freedom-of-infor...1198292-2/
EXCERPT: Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act in 1966 so that citizens could have more access to public records and hold government accountable. Since then, less information has become available to the public about businesses, researchers report.
Jeannine Relly and Carol Schwalbe, both associate professors in the University of Arizona School of Journalism, analyzed 60 years of congressional testimony, finding that corporations lobbied to alter the scope of the FOIA. “Though the FOIA is known as embodying the ‘people’s right to know,’ our research found that exceptions and exemptions to the law over time often favored the industries that lobbied heavily for information to be withheld,” Relly says.
Schwalbe says not receiving vital information through the press “reduces what the public learns about dangers to our health and safety, such as defective tires, bogus insurance policies, hazardous waste, and nuclear radiation.” The researchers detail their findings in the journal Government Information Quarterly....
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-statistics-are...erstanding
EXCERPT: Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli the famous remark: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’ In every industry, from education to healthcare to travel, the generation of quantitative data is considered important to maintain quality through competition. Yet statistics rarely show what they seem.
If you look at recent airline statistics, you’ll think that a far higher number of planes are arriving on schedule or early than ever before. But this appearance of improvement is deceptive. [...] This example of airlines twisting meaning – and, consequently, public perception – might be irritating, but it is by no means the only industry where semantic manipulation of statistics is found. [...] in recent years the competition among universities has become so intense that several have admitted to dishonestly manipulating the stats. [...] Similar problems plague the healthcare system in the United States.
[...] the sociologist Joel Best argues that we ought to avoid calling statistics ‘lies’, and instead educate ourselves so that we can question how and why statistical data are generated. [...] The numbers themselves – unless purposefully falsified – cannot lie, but they can be used to misrepresent....
Businesses have worked to cut ‘public’s right to know’
http://www.futurity.org/freedom-of-infor...1198292-2/
EXCERPT: Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act in 1966 so that citizens could have more access to public records and hold government accountable. Since then, less information has become available to the public about businesses, researchers report.
Jeannine Relly and Carol Schwalbe, both associate professors in the University of Arizona School of Journalism, analyzed 60 years of congressional testimony, finding that corporations lobbied to alter the scope of the FOIA. “Though the FOIA is known as embodying the ‘people’s right to know,’ our research found that exceptions and exemptions to the law over time often favored the industries that lobbied heavily for information to be withheld,” Relly says.
Schwalbe says not receiving vital information through the press “reduces what the public learns about dangers to our health and safety, such as defective tires, bogus insurance policies, hazardous waste, and nuclear radiation.” The researchers detail their findings in the journal Government Information Quarterly....