I think that statistics are very important in our everyday life, especially when it comes to comparing certain objects or stock markets. In sports, stats are used to compare the records of a current team and one before. In the market, statistics are used for marketing and financial analysis. This analysis becomes published into data for usage between business members to analyse, possibly to improve their status. Another way statistics are used is to compare populations. You can compare the population in a previous year compared to right now, kind of like the sports comparison.
All in all, I think that statistics are an essential way of making sure that people can improve in a better way for themselves and everyone else.
After reading the article, I learnt that statistics are extremely important to the point that it isn’t false. It helps us figure out an average without having to ask the entire majority. We only need a small group to find an assumed average of something.
There are many problems that follow with this type of statistics. The first is that most people can just go and make a statistic without actually having to collect all of the data. Second, there is a high chance that the people who are interviewed to be part of the statistic would be packed towards a certain side. For example, if we are making a statistic about how many people like sports, we could interview a majority of people who like sports, but not enough people who don’t like sports. This could lead to a biased statistic.
Third, the statistic can be an unfair poll question. For example, a country is led by a president who is hated by the majority of the citizens. If a statistics company went and asked people whether they liked the president, you would end up with the vast majority saying that they don’t like the president. This becomes an unfair statistic.
Fourth, there are statistics that are true, but they can be misinterpreted. For example, if we have a statistic that measures the number of people who traveled in different years, there was a large number in some years such as 2011 and 2016, but almost none in other years such as 2013. Then some companies would use the years in which lots of people traveled in their article. So what they would do is totally ignore 2013 not having many travelers and only use 2011 and 2016 to emphasize that people are traveling these days.
Fifth, most statistics are usually ranked. This is hard to use because it’s never specifically categorized. People could rank something specific such as diabetes to a general subject, such as cancer. Also, when ranking statistics, there is not usually a specific amount shown. They only show the ranking and not the amount.
Lastly, statistics normally use or don’t use percentages to emphasize a certain point. For example, if 20000 of 500000 died in an explosion, instead of saying 4% of the people died, they would most likely say that 20000 died to show that many people died. Saying 4% wouldn’t really bring a big emotion to the audience, but saying a large number like 20000 hooks the audience almost instantly.