31 Misleading Graphs and Statistics （31日误导图表和统计数据）.pdf

31 Misleading Graphs and Statistics It is a well known fact that statistics can be misleading. They are often used to prove a point, and can easily be twisted in favour of that point! The pur- pose of this section is to learn how to recognize common statisitcal deception so that to avoid being mislead. Bad Sampling When you use a sample to represent a larger group, you must make sure that the people in the sample are fairly representative of the larger group. Example 31.1 Decide whether a mall is a good place to find a sample for a survey about the amount of allowance received by people ages 10 to 15. Solution. The mall is probably not a representative place to find a fair sample of peo- ple in this age range. Taking a sample at the mall might not represent fairly those people who receive a small allowance, or none Misleading Graphs Good graphs are extremely powerful tools for displaying large quantities of complex data; they help turn the realms of information available today into knowledge. But, unfortunately, some graphs deceive or mislead. This may happen because the designer chooses to give readers the impression of better performance or results than is actually the situation. In other cases, the per- son who prepares the graph may want to be accurate and honest, but may mislead the reader by a poor choice of a graph form or poor graph construc- tion. The following things are important to consider when looking at a graph: 1. Title 2. Labels on both axes of a line or bar chart and on all sections of a pie chart 3. Source of the data 4. Key to a pictograph 5. Uniform size of a symbol in a pictograph 6. Scale: Does it start with zero? If not, is there a break shown 7. Scale: Are the numbers equally spaced? 1 Scaling and Axis Manipulation A graph can be altered by changing the scale of the graph. For example, data in the two