Comments on: Five easy lies

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:53:56 +0000

It’s cold in Minnesota and temperatures have changed plenty of times before, so CLEARLY there’s no global warming!

Good lesson, man.

By: Five ways to hide inconvenient data – plethaurus

Five ways to hide inconvenient data – plethaurus — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:56:42 +0000

[...] Chris Lawson demonstrates five ways to emphasise the positive. [...]

By: Talking Squid » Blog Archive » When all else fails, use logarithms

Talking Squid » Blog Archive » When all else fails, use logarithms — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 02:15:10 +0000

[...] wrote about this as one of the Five Easy Lies. And now, courtesy of the blog Pharma Analysis, I can show a real-life [...]

By: Returning to Duty « Impact Analysis

Returning to Duty « Impact Analysis — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 03:23:45 +0000

[...] way to start the New Year than getting a jump on it. I don’t know where I found this, but “Five Easy Lies” is a wonderful example of how to sow doubt and uncertainty about any set of data. I have written [...]

By: Natural Blogarithms » Blog Archive » How to lie with your graphs

Natural Blogarithms » Blog Archive » How to lie with your graphs — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:27:52 +0000

[...] post was on Talking Squid, entitled “Five Easy Lies”: Two of the most common ones I’ve seen in talks are [...]

By: Chris Lawson

Chris Lawson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:27:00 +0000

I have only watched Fox News on a handful of occasions. It was a handful too much.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:41:46 +0000

You see this a lot on Fox News.

By: Melody

Melody — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:34:15 +0000

Ha! Brings me back to my statistics class I took about four years ago. The textbook showed an example of a graph distorting the info, by using a 3D orange, with the majority side mostly obscured, so that it looked like more people thought organic foods were safer or were unsure, even though about 2/3 disagreed. I also remember graphs where the y axis would start at 40 or 200 or something. Er, yeah.

By: Leopold

Leopold — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:38:52 +0000

I’m a professional investor. I love this presentation. It is amazing the nonsense people continually come up with. The best part of it is: Most of them believe their own nonsense.

The problem is people are programmed to want to recognize patterns. We are very good at making out straight lines. The problem with finance is: there are no straight lines. There are no curved lines. And so our primitive biological senses that are good for telling us the quickest route to some food are terrible at figuring out a subject like finance.

People keep getting it wrong over and over ad nauseum, and they don’t get it. Selective memory: We remember our wins, and forget our losses. So we keep thinking we are doing a good job predicting when we just aren’t qualified to.

I keep track of every profit and every loss in a spreadsheet. It is humbling. But that’s just what I am these days: humble.

By: dav

dav — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:52:12 +0000

You can also stretch out the x axis and flatten that graph.