Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 11, 2009
August 10, 2009
August 12, 2009
Transcript:
Man: Brothers, 58% of Republicans say they're not sure if Obama was born here! We ignore those numbers at our peril! Man: Hang on, brother - did Jesus ever have to produce a birth certificate to establish HIS standing? Man: No... no... not as far as we know... although that'd be a pretty impressive document, wouldn't it? Man: Assuming it wasn't a fake. The Family debates the Birther bill.
Ushindi, One of my college textbooks was “How To Lie With Statistics.” It was a small and humorous book that clearly demonstrated how any idea can be supported with the proper twist in statistics.
One of its key points was the question, “what is an average?” It contained numerous demonstrations of how mathematical average, mode, median, etc all could legitimately be called an average, It is all a matter of which value do you need to support your point.