Bad reporting and distorted numbers for a 4Sight

Surprisingly many people subtract 20% (say from 100), get their 80 and then can't figure out why they only get 96 once they add what they think are the "same 20%" back onto their result. They just about realise there is something wrong when they see such a trivial example, but won't even notice when the same happens with a base price of say £488.12

"My Excel is not working, has my computer cought a virus?"  Yes, I really had that one once. 

Here is another one: British Gas invoices show a bar graph about your previous consumption. The bars only show the top 10% of any monthly consumption figure, slight variations therefore look much bigger than they are. Carl, I think that's a good one to show for a 4Sight.

Chris, this quote always makes me chuckle - "88.2% of Statistics are made up on the spot" - Vic Reeves quote for a Guiness advertising campaign

Peter - I hope to be doing a number of the South Wales 4 sights as a warm up for the tour, so Newport will probably have to suffer it as well

Michael - That is exactly the sort of thing. The other thing the big stores do (as pointed out by Trevor), is push the big family packs which you are supposed to think are cheaper, however if you look at the smaller packs you get more product per £ from the smaller packs.

Michelle - You will have to explain that one in more detail the next time we meet

Chris - You are right of course

BTW Thanks everyone for the requests for me to do a 4Sight at their meeting - I had no idea it would be so popular.

I havent worked out a route yet to maximise the number of meetings and meet ups yet (this calls for a spreadsheet). As soon as I have bottomed it all out I will of course put details up here

I am afraid that after exhaustive research that stat has been found to be only 68% accurate!

The Fox graph you have shown is awful, I hadn't seen it before, and can see no justification for it. The other thing I always say that you should look at is the flip side of such a statistic - i.e. even at 9.0% unemployment, that is 91% employed - suddenly things look rosier. (especially as 5% unemployment is considered turnover!)

You just reminded me. I was in Tesco a few weeks ago and I could but 24 Ibuprofen for 52p or 48 for £1.18.

No guessing which I bought!

My favourite abuse of statistics was in a presentation I went to about 20 years ago to a government funded agency who were running climate change models. Somebody asked how confident they were that there models were correct, and the answer was that they were 100% confident.

The reason being that they were running a scenario analysis, so that the central scenario gave 20% probability (say), but the tail ends of the probability went to infinity, therefore, the model was always going to be correct, just maybe not at the central point.

For anyone who's short of ideas, How To Lie With Statistics is always there as a reference

My son who lives with us still keeps getting a reminder that he has not paid his £0.00 phone bill!!

Here’s a good venue for your tour.  I look after Leeds Bradford Airport breakfast and Harrogate evening on the same day, I am sure we would love to welcome you.  I am doing a similar 4Sight with words and how they can be misinterpreted.  You would be able to meet our very own Excel Addict Gail Webster into the bargin!!

Mike Edward

Carl this is a great topic. Have you ever read Michael Blastland's "Go Figure - Seeing stats in a different way " columns on BBC News?  Here are some examples which may help for your 4SS...
Do we understand 'risk' of mobile phone use?
The youth unemployment mystery
Why nothing is really news at all
Are country roads more dangerous than city roads?

Hope I can catch one of your talks. You're one of those 4N forum regulars I would like to meet, but haven't yet.

I kept on getting a bill for ages as I hadn't paid my £0 bill by direct debit -  I love systems!

There's a whole series of podcasts on this sort of thing on  the BBC site : http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moreorless
Debunking headline grabbing stuff like Apple being worth more than Poland, red meat scare stories, etc

Jim Barker also posted this thread a few weeks ago, another '"insult the customer's intelligence" howler from Tesco :
http://www.4networking.biz/Forum/ViewTopic/115565

... and if your grand tour extends this far north, we'd be delighted to see you.

Hi Carl, I don't have any examples of mis-represented numbers ...... but if you are doing a 4N-summer-tour .... are you coming dahn sarf?  Or to be precise .... hitting South London? If so, there are lots of groups that would lurve having that sort of 4Sight ... including my own group Beautiful Bromley :o)

Check out our South London portal site which lists all the 4N groups in the vicinity ... this should help you plan your tour in our neck of the 4N woods.

Hey Carl,

Great topic - there'll be no shortage of content! I'm sure Steve would welcome you to Banbury on your tour :)

Nat

I can't give you the exact words or even the charity but I have recently seen on a charity collection box on the bar of a pub something like: '90% of profits go to the xxx charity'. The issue here is not the percentage, but that no where does it say what percentage of the money collected is the profits.