‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’ is a quote attributed to Mark Twain. Whether or not Twain said this, it is still a good reminder that statistics can be misused, sometimes deliberately. Students who are undertaking quantitative research should be particularly cautious in using secondary statistical data.
Examples of the ways statistics can be gathered and analysed incorrectly are provided by the BBC radio programme ‘More or Less’. Past programmes can be accessed on the programme’s website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd, and listened to on the BBC’s iPlayer . Alternatively they can be downloaded as a podcast from http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moreorless.
The programme produced on the 9 September 2011 helpfully and correctly states: ‘correlation is not causation’. Listen to the programme if you want to know why.
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