Thursday, December 15, 2005
There are three kinds of lies!
Huff explains "how to look a phoney statistic in the eye and face it down; and no less important, how to recognize sound and usable data in [the] wilderness of fraud". Look for bias, he advises, conscious and unconscious; find out "who-says-so" (if an "O.K. name" is cited, make sure it stands behind the information, not merely beside it); ask how the authority knows; try to find out what's missing; check whether the raw figure justifies the conclusion drawn and, most straightforwardly of all, ask yourself if the "statistics make sense".
There's a lot of misinformation out here, therefore, it would be prudent for anyone to at least try and analyzed any information before they make a final decision to believe or reject that said information. I guess we should check, cross check, and re-check all information.
posted by Cynthia
Permalink|
(4)|
Post a Comment
---------------oOo---------------
