Manipulating Scientific Information

Question 1

What is Anecdotal Evidence?

Answer 1

small sample (often one person)

not scientific (not based on science)

May believe these stories over studies with lots of data

Question 2

How can percentages be used in deceptive ways?

Answer 2

Suppose we want to dramatize how much the price of candy bars has gone up. We might have the following data:

January $ .76
February $ .54
March $ .51
April $ .63
May $ .80
June $ .91
July $ .76

We could correctly say that the price jumped from 51 cents to 91 cents in only three months (March to June), an increase of more than 78%! On the other hand, we can see it didn’t change at all from January to July, which we might avoid mentioning if we wanted to impress people with the price increase. Choosing the starting and ending points for data used is an easy way to deliberately manipulate statistics.

Question 3

Go over this chapter on blackboard as it is mostly graphs

Answer 3

:)