"CAN FIGURES LIE?”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29535, 9 June 1961, Page 20

"CAN FIGURES LIE?”

Lecturer’s \iews On Statistics "Can Figures Lie’" was the title of an address to the annual meeting of the South Island Dairy Association by Mr A. T. G. McArthur, senior lecturer in agricultural expansion at Canterbury. Agricultural College. "Figures can be twisted by persons who deliberately or otherwise wish to misinterpret them." said Mr McArthur. There was a modem trend to use percentages, but the actual figures should be looked at as well as the percentages, said Mr McArthur. “If you want the percentage figure to sound big you express it against something that is small, and if you want it to look small you express it against something that is big." Another way of twWing figures was to stretch the scale they were represented on. Mr McArthur said A newspaper advertisement for a drainage board loan had employed the two ways of twisting figures in its use of percentages and its stretching of the scale. “In my opinion the advertisement about these figures stank.” he said. Another question to be asked was whether comparisons were fair? Mr McArthur said he had seen a comparision of figures of diseased cows which recovered after being treated by veterinarians and those which recovered after being treated by farmers. In the first case it was 10 per cent., and in the latter case. 20 per cent The comparison was not fair because farmers did not call in veterinar.ans until the last moment, and the cow would have little chance of recovering. "Do not jump to conclusions about cause and effect." Mr McArthur said. "It could be a third factor which creates the difference.” He suggested that a plot cou'.d be made of children’* feel and their handwriting speed and on the basis of this it could be assumed that the size of feet was related to handwriting speed. The true explanation would be that the children with bigger feet were older and their handwriting was quicker for that reason.