Statistical techniques are used extensively by marketing, accounting, quality co

Question

Statistical techniques are used extensively by marketing, accounting, quality control, consumers, professional sports people, hospital administrators, educators, politicians, physicians, etc...

As such a strong tool, statistics is often misused. Everyone has heard the joke (?) about the statistician who drowned in a river with an average depth of 3 feet or the person who boarded a plane with a bomb because "the odds of two bombs on the same plane are lower than one in one millionth".

Can you find examples in the popular press of misuse of statistics?

Explanation / Answer

" There are three types of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics"--Mark Twain

1) Perhaps the most famous case ever of misleading statistics in the news is the case of Sally Clark, who was convicted of murdering her children. She was freed after it was found the statistics used in her murder trial were completely wrong.

Professor Sir Roy Meadow, the controversial paediatrician, an expert witness at the trial, told the jury the chance of two children in an affluent family suffering cot death was "one in 73million". The Royal Statistical Society disagreed and wrote to the lord chancellor saying there was "no statistical basis" for the figure. Experts now believe the risk could be anywhere between one in 100 and one in 8,500.

2) Colgate’s claim was that 80% of dentists recommended the brand. This slogan is currently banned in the UK. Consumers were led to believe that 80% of dentists recommended Colgate while 20% recommended other brands. It turns out that when dentists were surveyed, they could choose several brands — not just one. So other brands could be just as popular as Colgate. This completely misleading statistic was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.

3) In 2009 and 2010, Reebok made the following claims about its EasyTone and RunTone shoes: Lab tests “proved” that the shoes work “your hamstrings and calves up to 11% harder and tone your butt up to 28% more than regular sneakers … just by walking!”. The figures turned out to be completely wrong. The FTC stated that Reebok needed to pay a settlement of $25 million for deceptive advertising.

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