
What are the most subtle ways to deceive people with statistics? - ayanai
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-subtle-ways-to-deceive-people-with-statistics/answer/Richard-Muller-3?share=1
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Arnt
Subtle... I like the ones that exploit exponential effects or the birthday
paradox.

For example: Men are <10% taller than women on average. But if you look at a
largish group, the probability that the tallest person is a man is ~99%. With
a bit of writing skill, that probability can be used to make the difference
seem like 20%, 40% or even more, whatever the writer wants.

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flukus
Create a sampling bias. When you want to prove cats are more popular than
dogs, survey people buying cat food. If you want to prove the opposite then
survey people buying dog food. Quite a lot of the statistics you read in
otherwise reputable news organisations will have sampling errors like this,
sometimes intentionally.

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quuquuquu
Hmm, let me try.

An internet poll suggests that Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" shall
be the new US national anthem.

The sampling bias is that everyone who doesn't use a computer often probably
never came across the poll

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dispo001
Limit historical data to fit your “conclusion”, pick the data set(s) that
fit(s) your “conclusion” best and eliminate or highlight data points that are
far-out.

