[quotes] Naked Statistics - Charles Wheelan 2013

 

"It's easy to lie with statistics, but it's hard to tell the truth without them."

"The real problem is that the average income in America is not equal to the income of the average American."

"The Democrats, who engineered this tax increase, pointed out (correctly) that the state income tax rate was increased by 2 percentage points (from 3 percent to 5 percent). The Republicans pointed out (also correctly) that the state income tax had been raised by 67 percent."

"The key lesson is to pay attention to the unit of analysis. Who or what is being described, and is that different from the 'who' or 'what' being described by someone else?"

"Nominal figures are not adjusted for inflation. A comparison of the nominal cost of a government program in 1970 to the nominal cost of the same program in 2011 merely compares the size of the checks that the Treasury wrote in those two years - without any recognition that a dollar in 1970 bought more stuff than a dollar in 2011."

"There is a common business aphorism: 'You can't manage what you can't measure.' True But you had better be darn sure that what you are measuring is really what you are trying to manage."

"But you had better be darn certain that the folks being evaluated can't make themselves look better (statistically) in ways that are not consistent with the goal at hand."

"When you solicit public opinion, the phrasing of the question and the choice of language can matter enormously."

"According to this research, it is not the stress associated with major responsibilities that will kill you; it is the stress associated with being told what to do while having little say in how or when it gets done."

"The problem is that the mechanics of regression analysis are not the hard part; the hard part is determining which variables ought to be considered in the analysis and how that can best be done. Regression analysis is like one of those fancy power tools. It is relatively easy to use, but hard to use well - and potentially dangerous when used improperly."

"An association between two variables is like a fingerprint at the scene of the crime. It points us in the right direction, but it's rarely enough to convict. (And sometimes a fingerprint at the scene of a crime doesn't belong to the perpetrator.) Any regression analysis needs a theoretical underpinning. Why are the explanatory variables in the equation? What phenomena from other disciplines can explain the observed results?"

"In the case of a randomized, controlled experiment, the control group is the counterfactual. In cases where a controlled experiment is impractical or immoral, we need to find some other way of approximating the counterfactual. Our understanding of the world depends on finding clever ways to do that."