Don’t trust naked numbers
We are bombarded with data and numbers all the time. If you stick a number to it, it sounds more trustworthy — is a motto followed by many journalists when trying to support their “shocking” revelations and catchy headlines.
Here is a little discussion between a couple of friends after one of them has read the news on the new raging virus killing thousands of people.
A: “The news says 100 000 people died of the disease TROLL-15.”
B: “That’s pretty serious man.”
A: “Yeah, we need to do something about it immediately.
C: “Where did those people die? The whole world? (=0.001%). In Slovakia? (=1.8%)”
A: “In the European Union. (=0.022%)
C: “That’s nasty, but not that bad, we shouldn’t be worried then.
D: “When did those people die of this disease? Last year?”
A: “In the past two days.”
B, C, D: “F***!”
E: “How old were the people who died?”
A: “Every age group is affected, but seems like more older people are dying from it. Same with other diseases though.”
E: “S***. What about gender?”
A: “The victims are 80% men and 20% women.”
E: “At least the women are relatively safe.The men surviving would be lucky in the new world. Where is it spreading?”
A: “In Barcelona. It started during the football world’s championship finale.”
E: “So if it started in the football stadium where 90% of visitors were men. The fact more men have died of it doesn’t mean much.”
A: “It probably doesn’t.
We could continue with this fake story further, but you get the point. Every additional information puts the single number into a different perspective. Naked number on its own doesn’t tell you anything.
If you interpret the data without its context, you are on a good track to “lie with statistics”. Either you do it deliberately to manipulate others or you do it unintentionally due to laziness to understand all the details (ignorance of knowledge). Or you just want to prove your point really fast to someone and google the first result supporting your point. (very scientific indeed)
“Modern experts on everything”
A lot of people think that by reading 10+ media articles makes them experts on something.
“There are numbers and scientific research supporting the statements!”
Yes, a lot of people base their words on stuff they heard somewhere or read somewhere. The more numbers and the more scientists mentioned, the better. However, let’s take into consideration how the information is spreading.
A scientist conducts the research and writes a paper which is approved of by fellow scientists (the experts in the same domain). Then someone interested in it takes 5 of such papers and books and summarises the key takeaways in some easier to read format. He drops the methodology, drops the references. Changes the wording of “might be” into “is causing” etc. Then another person takes the info from 5 such articles and summarises it into a shocking article on the 5 huge reveals in medicine. After that, someone pulls a single bullet point from the already misinterpreted and simplified number and writes a Facebook status on people dying from a new disease. Lastly, someone summarises 10 such statuses into simple statement: vaccines kill our babies.
This is how fake experts emerge in our society. One problem is that they believe the misinterpreted information and the other one, they believe that they have found the ultimate truth supported by science.
How to get out of this mess?
Start small and start with yourself.
- Don’t settle with a single number: “Thanks to our new government, we are producing 1 million cars per year.” Compare the number with something to give it a meaning: “Yeah, but the previous government was producing 995 000 a year while the economy was on lockdown due to TROLL-15 for 3 months.”
- Put things into perspective. “The Chinese eat 77.4 billion kg of meat in 2009 while the Americans only 36.8 billion kg of meat in 2009. Those Chinese are such animal killers.” However, China has a larger population than the US. When looking at per person meat consumption the Chinese eat 58.2 kg per person while the Americans 120.2 kg per person. Who is the murderer now?
- Divide the data into groups which impact the result. “60% of the people died of TROLL-19 in Mordor but only 5% in Shire. What a poor disease management they have in Mordor.” Actually, it was a disease killing mostly Orcs and only slightly affecting other species. No Orcs live in Shire and thus all the Orcs which were there on holiday and caught it died. From purely Orc perspective, 100% of Orcs died of the disease in Shire and only 60% in Mordor.
- Understand the origin of the data. What exactly does the number mean and how was it created? Be curious and ask questions. “95% of customers liked Central Perk restaurant while only 80% liked Jack Rabbit Slims restaurant.” The Central Perk restaurant asked 20 of their loyal customers to provide feedback while Jack Rabbit Slims restaurant has randomly selected 1000 customers to share their experience.
Don’t trust naked data. Do your research, understand the context and don’t share your misinterpretations of the naked data online. You can kill someone without realising it.
