I need to present a 2 minute presentation in my statistics class tommrow, demonstrating an example on how the media uses statistics incorrectly, but I am having trouble finding one online. Any ideas?
I did a quick search on Google and came across these books Damned Lies and Statistics and More Damned Lies and Statistics which discuss incorrect use of statistics. You can read excerpts on Google Scholar (probably on Amazon as well). It might be easier to work backwards using the categories of misused statistics that the author cites to find articles rather than randomly looking at articles in the hopes of finding mistakes.
A girl in my class used the first article in class. I was thinking of bringing my magazine in and showing them the different examples, such as how Patene advertises thier Ice Shine shampoo to give you "2X the shine", or how their is an article for "Hydroxycut" and the article states that you can "lose up to 4.5X the weight than just diet and exercise alone"
I just don't know how to explain that that is an incorrect statistic, any ideas?
magazines constantly cite the "50% of marriages end in divorce" statistic, which is usually used totally incorrectly. Here's a brief link that explains it, but I am sure there are longer ones out there.
-- Edited by halleybird at 00:22, 2007-05-01
-- Edited by halleybird at 00:23, 2007-05-01
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