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Through the looking glass

I've frequently heard the expression "numbers don't lie", and while that may be true, the people presenting the numbers do. Not all numbers and stats used in an artical are going to be fake or wrong or untrue. Most likely the numbers are correct, but it's the context in which we place them, that leads to the lies.

"In short, even when tendentiousness is not at issue, lack of clarity may be. Again, you need to know what the question is before you can interpret its answer."

If people were able to examine the questions posed to people during polls and surveys, maybe we'd come up with different conclusions. Anyone can phrase a question or ask during a certain time of day, in a certain area, to get the response that they want. Numbers are easy to munipulate, so in order to really get the truth out of what's being presented to us, we need to view numbers from all sides.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on November 1, 2007 9:43 PM.

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