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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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You're all at C (or sea) | 145 comments | Create New Account

Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Authored by: darrellb on Sunday, June 24 2012 @ 06:35 AM EDT

Statistics don't lie, but people lie using statistics.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, June 24 2012 @ 12:08 PM EDT

Like economics there are a large number of assumptions made in statistics. The
population distribution, the sampling methodology (randomness, sample size,
outliers...) When the end results get to the press these are omitted so are the
error term and confidence limits. In journal articles these are included and
allow you to properly assess the results. There is also often an issue with
equating correlation with causation.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

You're all at C (or sea)

Authored by: Wol on Sunday, June 24 2012 @ 03:24 PM EDT

That was my point :-)

by not telling you where they are starting from (indeed, often misleading you as
to the starting point) they can get you where they want to be without actually
lying.

"Lying by ommission" - not telling you the starting point, so you end
up in the wrong place.

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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