In: Statistics and Probability
Please explain shortly four possible ways how you can lie
and
misinform with statistics and graphs.
Misleading people with graphs is a malpractice which is not
limited
to the fields of politics and business. Below is is a graphic
published
by music service genius to present the most popular artists
of the previous year (as measured in song lyrics viewed on
the
website).
What if anything is wrong with the graphic?
Dear student, please comment in the case of any doubt and I would love to clarify it.
Here are a few techniques that skew the analysis and the results of a survey -
- Faulty polling
- Flawed correlations
- Data fishing
- Misleading data visualization
- Purposeful and selective bias
- Using percentage change in combination with a small sample
size
The way they can present it in the wrong way so that people believe that Canada is far behind other countries-
1. Faulty polling - Conduct a survey, just take a limited number of people's opinions(small sample size) in it, and show the results as wanted.
2. Purposeful and selective bias - Take into consideration the biases, It is the bias introduced by the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analyzed. For example in this case, just take people who say Canada is behind and show the results.
3. Misleading Data Visualization
A misleading graphic to present most popular artist can be created.
In case when there is anything wrong with the graphic, misinformation can be spread and people tend to believe that. As people get connected to graphs and visualizations better, it is easy to make people believe anything wrong also with the wrong and manipulated graphs.