Yesterday we spoke about the way different people interpret the same facts and react differently. There is another similar situation that is very important to understand. And you and I are often manipulated by the people who use it simply by the way they use it. Statistics.

 The average person has 2.35 children, marries 2, 21 times, have 5,12345 jobs in his lifetime. I am just putting in figures to show the absurdity of this. Do you know ANYBODY with 2.35 children? I am not suggesting that the figures are not useful. I am suggesting that we see the info for what it is. The moment I start working on data and regrouping it to make sense from it, I also lose a lot of information.

 I will use an example from my previous life as a Minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. It became my doubtful privilege to do a report on the various congregations who formed a so called “circle”. Every year all the figures were given as percentages. So, for instance the morning church attendance was 37% for years, Then it dwindled down to 35%, stabilised for a few years and by the time I did my report, it was 33%. Nothing to worry about, because it was more or less the same over many years, right? Wrong! There was another trend working – we were in the country side and people were moving to the cities, so the actual number of members were growing less. That implied that when you had 2000 members and a 40% attendance, you had 800 people in church. But if you only have 1000 members and 35% pitch up, you only have 350 people in church. And you would agree – there is a huge difference! But when we deal with percentages, it is not so big, especially if the drop is slowly over time, that is why we preferred percentages!

 Let’s use another example. Let’s say I start trading single stock futures. Since it is new to me and I know it is a bit risky, I decide to only make R10 000 available for it. Everything goes according to plan and I make 10% per day and capitalise my gains. Then it means I make R1000, R1100, R1210, R1331, R1464 and so forth everyday. But calculating my daily gain, it is still only 10%. But the difference in my bottom line is becoming dramatic!

 Something a bit more contentious is when I hear somebody asking for millions and millions of Rands, “because every year about 40 000 people die from a very rare disease. That IS a lot of people and it IS sad, I don’t deny that. But with a population of 40 million, it is only 0.1% of the population. If I had to allocate scarce resources, I would rather divert it to diseases that affect a much bigger percentage of the population. This just to illustrate how people try to manipulate us by using raw figures or calculated figures to get us to do what they want. Please don’t get me wrong – 40 000 people is a lot and we should try to help if we can.

 What I am trying to say is simply this – never, ever, just accept any fact, figure or statistic as it is presented to you. Rather try to understand where the figure comes from, is it “raw data” as in 40 000 people die of a rare disease or is it a percentage, such as 35% of members attend the morning service. And once you know where that figure comes from, you can put it in a more useful perspective.

 I conclude with a last example. Frequently I get e-mails trying to sell anything from a share trading system to a sports betting system saying: “Make R12 000 with a few sms’s” That is really attention grabbing, isn’t it? But the one piece of information I never get is: with how much money did they start? If they started with R100 is is really impressive, almost unbelievable. But if they started with R15 000 I am not really interested! If they started with R11 000 I would like to know how long it took and how many trades. The problem is, we just assume it is profit. We just assume it came quickly – because we want to.

 So, always remind yourself of this – there are lies, then there are damn lies and then there are statistics. And we can manipulate the figures in such a way that we can prove almost anything. Beware.

Tomorrow I will share with you another way that information is supplied “selectively”.

 

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