The ABC’s Statistics and Lies
Sir: A summary of the results of the Australia Talks Survey was published by the ABC on its News website on June 10. The results are interesting mainly because they reveal the prejudices and intellectual deficiencies of ABC staff and (perhaps) consumers of ABC presentations.
The survey results appeared under the heading “Data Doesn’t Lie”. One might have thought by now that even the ABC would know data does indeed lie. The head of Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University, Sir David Spiegelhalter, recently published an entire book explaining why data is at risk of being misapplied and misinterpreted (The Art of Statistics). Long ago Mark Twain popularised the saying, “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” That well-known warning certainly applies to this ABC survey. The heading is a lie, and the contents are no better.
The first lie on the ABC News website is the omission of any mention of the well-known problems of sampling and confirmation bias…
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