Here is a Fun Challenge: Be Skeptical of Statistics Even When They Support Your Point of View
I sometimes wonder if the media and the punditocracy have any ability any more to reality-check statistics. Two examples:
One
Trump supporters were running around in circles patting themselves on the back with this story:
African American business owners are on the rise. According to the Minority 2018 Small Business Trends survey, the number of black-owned small businesses in the U.S. increased by a staggering 400% in a year-over-year time period from 2017 to 2018.
I call bullsh*t on this. There is no WAY that the number of black-owned businesses increase by a factor of 5** in just one year. There are millions of black-owned small businesses in this country and there is no way this quintupled** in a year. It does not pass any kind of smell test. It is clearly some sort of measurement error, either a small sample size for a survey or a change in data source and definitions from one year to another. I could go investigate the study and try to figure out the cause but I do not even need to bother because economic and demographic data simply do not change at this pace in one year.
Two
The other example I have is this absurd figure:
A recent survey conducted by OVW and the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that an average of one in four undergraduate females experience sexual assault by the time they finish college.
Here is the deal with this stat: no one actually really believes it. Why do I say this with confidence? Because parents still send their daughters to college -- in fact they fight and scrap and invest huge amounts of time and money to send their daughter to college. If they really believed their little darling had a 1 in 4 chance of being sexually assaulted, they would never do so.
Here is a point of comparison: The Japanese brutal occupation of Nanjing, China is commonly known as the "Rape of Nanjing." It is called this in part because so many local women were raped. The numbers are fought over by historians, but the best estimate is that 20,000 of the approximately 100,000 women who were in Nanjing at the time were raped by Japanese soldiers, or about one in five. This means that if the one in four number is correct, then colleges are more dangerous for women than being in Nanjing during the Japanese occupation. Now, I would venture to guess that if I tried to stuff you daughter into a time machine and send her back to Nanjing on December 13, 1937 you would probably fight me to the death to prevent it. But parents don't act anything like this vis a vis going to college, ergo no one believes this figure. So why does everyone keep using it like it is accurate?
** I had put quadrupled but my son just called and reminded me that a 400% increase means quintupled. Thanks, Nic. Though I will say there is a good chance the source incorrectly used 400% to mean quadrupled, so I can't rule that out either.
