Damned Lies and Statistics

"This is written by a sociologist, so we have moved on from psychology to sociology . I like this book because one of the things that really irritates me as a statistician is when numbers are bandied around as though they are God-given truths and can’t be argued with. There is a nice quote from Joel Best that “all statistics are social products, the results of people’s efforts”. He says you should always ask, “Why was this statistic created?” Certainly statistics are constructed from things that people have chosen to measure and define, and the numbers that come out of those studies often take on a life of their own. Best uses the lovely phrase “number laundering”, when the origins of numbers are forgotten. They get so bandied around that nobody knows where they came from. In the BBC Radio Four programme More or Less these are known as “zombie statistics”, numbers that refuse to die. However much people criticise them, they keep getting wheeled out. Exactly, numbers get distorted. What happens is that the statistic starts to take on a new interpretation, as the original definition is replaced by an emotive example of a particular case. For example, less than half of violent crimes in the UK actually involve any form of violence. In the other cases the victim isn’t actually touched or harmed at all. But the popular image of a violent crime is based on extreme examples covered in the media. Of course, if I took a swing at you with an axe and missed it is still a violent crime, but it does mean that we have to be really careful about definitions. So Joel Best has lots of good examples of how numbers get misused by people, including politicians, and how we should be wary of that. There is a sociological idea of “deconstruction”, and what I have really learnt from all these books is the importance of deconstructing statistics. We need to be able to view them critically."