Some say, sometimes lies and statistics go hand-in-hand. What could people possibly mean by this? Stats are made up of numbers and how can numbers lie if they were gathered and cleansed with the best of intentions?
One way could be in the presentation of data. We all know this but it helps to see an example using a situation that gets American quite mad: rising gas prices. Below is a simple dataset containing gas price from yesterday and today.
If you are a politician in an American state that has these prices, you might want to create a bar chart that looks like this:
From a quick glance, it seems that gas prices didn’t go up much at all. The size of each bar is relatively the same. Now, let’s look at it from a consumer point of view.
From the chart directly above, it seems that gas prices jumped a lot. Just look at the size difference of the two bars! So, who’s right and who’s wrong? It all depends on the point that the author wants to convey by providing additional charts and / or written description. Both sides can come up with valid points to back up their respective chart and it’s up to you to interpret if these points are ones that you truly believe in. If so, maybe they really aren’t lying…