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Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
Which is fine, as long as the interpretative part isn't presented as infallible objective truth. PS if you ever want to see people spin data (one could in some cases say manipulate), look at some clinical trial results sometime, including for some of our favorite drugs.
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Absolutely. I have no problem with using statistics, they are a vital and necessary tool in helping to find solutions, trends, and so on, over an infinite number of situations and questions. And the people who have learned and mastered this mathematical science can come up with and discover some truly amazing things. But for the most part, you and I both know statistics are rarely, if ever, going to be 100% accurate and/or predictive in their results. And as you pointed out, can be (and many times are) able to be manipulated. The problem isn't in the statistics themselves, its with the people who ignore the shortcomings of relying solely on statistics without taking into account inherent weaknesses and bias in the data they're using, or that manipulate it, knowingly or unknowingly, for their own purposes or ends.
And speaking of manipulating data, reminds me of an old accountants joke. Owner of a company needs a new accountant, so he puts an ad in the paper (I did say this was an OLD joke). Later that week, he starts having people come in for interviews. And at the end of every interview as the applicants get up to leave, he always asks them one last quick question. "What's 2 + 2 equal?" And invariably they all they all give him the correct answer of 4. So he shakes their hands, thanks them and says he'll be in touch, and they part company. Now its Friday, and the owner has been at these interviews all day, and still hasn't found an applicant he really likes for the accountant's job. He's tired, but has one has last interview for the day. So the applicant comes in, sits down, and they start. Interview goes okay, like pretty much all the other earlier ones. And as they wrap it up and the applicant starts to get up to go, the owner asks his same final question. "By the way, what's 2 + 2 equal?" To which the applicant quickly replies, "What do you want it to be?" And as he then goes to shake the applicant's hand, he smiles and asks one more question. "When can you start?"