I heard a good one on the radio today. A politician was trying to make a case for something, which I won't go into here. He was talking about the teenage abuse of drugs used to treat ADHD. He said that the statistics proved his case. Here is his argument - as the level of prescribing the drugs went down, so did the abuse of the redirected drugs. Let's have a reality check here......If the level of prescribing went down, there were less drugs available, of course there will be less abuse.
One of the great things about a democracy is that anyone can run for office....Local Council, State Government or Federal Government.....no training necessary. But that is also the problem. Politicians, along with most other people will use numbers to illustrate any point they are trying to make. Very few actually take the time to analyse what the numbers actually mean.
Don't believe all the numbers that people throw at you. Take time to investigate for yourself. If you want some good reading on numbers, try these books and blogs:
1. Super Crunchers by Stephen Ayres
2. Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt
3. Super Freakonomics by the same guys
4. And their blog - Freakonomics Blog
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