Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

• Who'd Have Thought? "Clean" movies biggest winners. - TechSupport
  • I don't really see how any of those categories listed mean "filth," per se. sm - ChuckM
    • The categories are as specific as terms like "violence" allow - sm - TechSupport
      • I'm just always suspicious of "statistics," in general, but particularly so -- sm - ChuckM
        • Statistics - sm - TechSupport
          • Oh, it's not a matter of wanting to pick and choose the data I "like" - if I want (sm) - ChuckM
            • Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - nm
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                • topics evolve and change, Daddy nm - who cares?
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A healthy skepticism about statistics is certainly warranted.  If you want the details behind the numbers, I suppose you can write to the source.

The problem is, if you're going to insist that every story that uses statistics must include the data set that was used to derive them, either the daily newspaper would be as thick as the Encyclopedia Britannica or it would have to exclude a considerable proportion of the articles that mention numbers.

Do you require that a newspaper article that analyzes the 8700 different earmarks in the latest federal budget and makes statements, for instance, that "about 60% of them will create no jobs at all",  must then publish the budget along with it, or even that it provide specific reference to each and every earmark and whether it was classified as "a job producer" or "nonproducer"?  Or, do you go yourself to the federal budget, find and classify each earmark and compare your findings with the article?  I'm guessing not.  

Obviously, you need a better strategy than merely being "suspicious of statistics", especially if that means rejecting them out of hand.  And I'd bet a good portion of the farm that you will find, if you are honest with yourself, that you apply this suspicion rather selectively to do just that - reject information that you don't happen to "like".  That, or you must be missing out on a great deal of information. 

that's all they are.  You cannot make factual claims based on statistics.  I personally know of people with both pancreatic and ovarian cancer.  While the survival rates are grim, there are survivors.  Furthermore, the claim stated that he had 5 weeks to live.  Since when does a doctor stick an expiration tag on someone like that? I've worked for several oncologists and not one patient was ever given an expiration date as exact as that. 

Treatments do work and can shrink the size of someone's cancer, thereby increasing their survival rate and prolonging their life.  Your chance of survival is also based on many factors:  lifestyle, hereditary factors, early detection, methods of prevention, etc.  While many may eventually succumb to the disease, still some do survive.  I would never spread spread rumors with my source being a gossip column.  What does the name tell you?