“87% of all statistics are made up out of thin air.”

19 Replies to ““87% of all statistics are made up out of thin air.””

1. I call that a SWAG – Scientific Wild Assed Guess.

2. 97.6 % of the time ….

3. 27% of the time statistics made up out of thin air work 100% of the time.

4. here is a real one . independent of the data until you get down to one data point

   50% of people are dumber than average

   1. In Lake Woebegone, all the children are above average.

      1. That’s like Climate Change, where every country is warming faster than the average.

   2. You’re confusing the mean with the average.

5. Mann’s hockey stick was based on 1 tree in Siberia, and ignored the forest around it, in order to prove Mann Made Global Warming, which under no circumstances was it falsifiable.

6. I think it was scifi author Spider Robinson who opined that 90% of everything is shit…!

   I also remember reading somewhere that 75% of statistics are made up; obviously, and unsurprisingly, that percentage is greater now!

7. Lies, damned lies and statistics.

8. Anybody that ever took polls must know that the questions are fashioned in such way that you gotta choose what they want you to choose.
   Done many polls, Ipsos, Angus-Reed, had to quit them, the questions were tailored to the answers, there was no other option.

9. I agree Vito.. A cherry picking we go.. Its not just polls its studies as well.. Adjust the parameters until PRESTO we have a winner $$$..

   1. Another cheating technique is data mining, where a large quantity of data is obtained and checked for correlations with a wide variety of parameters. You inevitably find a correlation at random. Then you write your “scientific” paper.

      1. Like the old song, “This little data mine, I’m gonna let it shine…”

10. Made-up statistics are increasing at a rate of 1.2% per year over baseline. So at the end of 100 years, 120% of statistics will be made-up.
    –
    Wait up……..
    …….ah, I see. Some of those will be government statistics. Now it makes sense.

    It’s just like government increasing a budget 4% when an 8% increase was requested. We all know that means, in government calculations, a 50% cut in the budget.

    1. That would be how it works H.R.

    2. You mean 330% Shirley

       1. No, I know what I pulled out of thin air, Robert, and it wasn’t 330%.

          96% of the time, ya gotta be realistic about these made-up statistics. The other 7% of the time people don’t care. They hear numbers and their eyes glaze over.

          Oh, and I was a Boy Named Sue, not Shirley. The first couple of years of grade school, recess was tough. But by 4th grade, even the local mafia hitmen kept their distance.

11. Todd Snider – Statistician’s Blues
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK6zjtUj00