The U.S. government keeps statistics on many people in America. One interesting

Question

The U.S. government keeps statistics on many people in America. One interesting statistic is the poverty rate. To be living in poverty, one must earn income below a certain threshold (approximately $900 per month). Many multimillionaires are included in this statistic. Recently, Barbara Streisand was "living in poverty." In a particular year, she did not perform live, and her album sales were extremely slow. She has a great deal of wealth but had little income that year. Although she has more money than 99.99% of the rest of the population, the government believed that she was impoverished. What other statistic can you name that is misleading? Why?

Explanation / Answer

This is a classic case where statistics is misused.In order to have a idea of some ones property one must should see his or her income over time but not just for a year. Considering such case can me misleading such this one. One of such misleading example of statistical measure can be mean. Mean is a descriptive measure of statistics which is highly influenced by the unusual values. For better understanding let us consider a example. Suppose one fine morning bill gates decided to buy a house near some ones house. Suppose the wealth of the neighborhood was before arrival of  bill gates was $40000 per household but after his arrival it will shoot up to say $400000 per house hold. This average income is quite misleading because it does not gives any idea about the average income of most of the household.

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