> the quote popularized by Mark Twain "Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

I’m increasingly convinced this is a thought-terminating cliche. Understanding the difference between a median, mean and mode is fundamentally empowering. Enough people, however, will stop themselves from trying to understand that by quoting such a joke.

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roenxi a day ago | parent [-]

Its more a foreshadowing of Simpson's paradox and a cluster of similarly counterintuitive effects. Statistical evidence that is technically of high quality can cause decision makers to believe the exact opposite of what is true.

	▲	JumpCrisscross a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Statistical evidence that is technically of high quality can cause decision makers to believe the exact opposite of what is true High-quality statistics allow themselves to be inspected. When a statistic is being passed around unadorned, particularly with a call to action, that’s no different from an uncited fact being accepted at face value. (Most of the complexity of statistics is in sampling. Most of the errors in statistical judgment tend to come down to misunderstanding how a sample’s statistics translate to the population you actually care about.)