Damned Lies And Statistics Summary

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From Statistics To Best Believed Rumors Joe Best’s “Damned Lies And Statistics” is a well written book about, as I understood it, the different ways in which a statistic is made into a “rumor.” In other words, the book goes on and on about the different series of pathways in which a statistic goes threw that eventually force it to evolve into being interpreted into something greater than what it really is. Best provides a series of examples that support the thesis. In which he forces the reader to expand his or hers ideas about the statistics they know, and to really analyze each detail and to use commonsense to make it a fact or a trashy rumor. Although I considered this book to be “boring” at first, it actually turned out to be the best book I have ever read. It actually taught me something, the importance of words. It taught me that everything you say affects other people, because some things are so easy to believe and that they affect what some people think. Although many advocates persuade their listeners by using statistics, they sometimes use facts that are not entirely true. This is a fact, and it is a method used to brain wash people and to catch their attention. Although it is affective, it…show more content…
One example would be that it is used by politicians to inform people about social issues, as Best explains in chapter one. This is why they are so important. Due to the fact that if they are not used the right way they can really affect how things are believed to be and what people might do because of them. Threw out the book Best explains different things that cause deformations in statistics. They round up from the simple fact that people usually change the meaning of them due to the fact that they simply don’t understand it. If one repeats something that we don’t understand we are bound to make some mistakes in the process of repeating
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