About Statistics

The Deceptive Nature of Statistics and Visuals

The manner that statistics and visuals convey facts can occasionally be very deceptive. When we examine the average American, we can find that TV commercials and advertisements have a significant impact on their consumption. Although the process is quite basic, the information supplied in advertisements is done so to deceive the reader and persuade them to buy the goods (Grooves). This occurs frequently in statistical data presentations where advertisements conceal or misrepresent outcomes using scientific data. The viewers have a tendency to believe statistics-based facts and figures.

A classic historical example of the polling result published by Literary digest of the year 1936 regarding who will be next president between Landon and Roosevelt.

The magazine used a reader’s poll in which it collected response from its readers through telephone using the telephone yellow pages. The poll result showed that Landon will be the winner, though in realty Roosevelt won. The cause of this misleading information was the statistical bias to Landon due to not including all potential voters into the poll. The poll could not reach low income group who do not own a telephone.

Answer to Question 2

Mean, mode and median all measures central tendency but for different group of population. Mean is the average value of the population. It is used for a population when the data are mostly scattered evenly around a central value. On the other hand, mode is mainly used when similar data are concentrated around the central value and when their recurring values. It is good for research. Finally, the median is used for cases where the data are evenly dispersed. It is not an accurate result and only good for data that are scattered.

Works Cited

Grooves, R. Survey Errors and Survey Costs. New York: Wiley-Interscience, 2004. Print .