There are two famous quotes by Mark Twain from his published book “Chapters from My Autobiography”: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics’ and also ‘Statistics are often used to lie to the public because most people do not understand how statistics work’. (see link below for reference). Another famous quote by George Carlin ‘Think about how stupid the average person is; now realize half of them are dumber than that’. These quotes are amazingly accurate at showing how an unsuspecting audience are preyed on by many consumer establishments that actually believe this quote to be true. They start by promising that in their research they found 80% of the population prefer their product, when in actual fact, the population the company are referring to only tested 124 participants. Statistics are moved, shuffled, sliced and diced to fit in with what a company require to keep funding going or increase the sales of a product. So where did this data originally come from? who actually ran the surveys and what is the ulterior motive for publishing the results this way? Would it be fair to say, that if a person had a strong statistical background, they would be able to tell the difference between a lie and genuine research? Or is it that a piece of research only lets a person see what the researcher wants you to see. There are many great benefits to gaining a strong statistical background, as the statistics are the first stepping stones when drawing conclusions from any piece of research. To fully understand any research an understanding of statistics is crucial, but if everyone had this knowledge, the consumer industry would be in serious trouble and have to put in place new strategies, to convince the population that their product is best.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1091350
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
smmitch 