Nov

6

I notice how journalist select for stories to use percentages versus discrete values to server their own interests and the "public" is easily confused. Today, they pick the number nearing 1T to describe Mr. Tesla's pay which seems high. But they could have framed the story as he could be raising his ownership to 12% to 25% of a company he founded. Not much of a story there. Other places like crime statistics they usually go with the %. As in violent crime has risen 100%, this could mean 1 homicide to 2. Without the data with percent's the conclusions are obfuscatory. Percents can never go down more than 99.9%, but they can rise by an infinite amount. This fact also leaves much room for spurious selection.


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

1 Comment so far

  1. Jeffrey Watson on November 7, 2025 12:40 pm

    When discussing taxation, I love to point out the fact that one puts dollars in the bank, not percentages.

Archives

Resources & Links

Search