After looking through many newspaper search engines and not really thinking any of the stories had bad numbers, I've really learned what I need to work on. And what I need to work on is learning the basics of many different topics (even if I'm not interested in the topic) so I know if the numbers look suspicious. I don't know what is too big or too small when it comes to deaths in Iraq or the number of illegal immigrants in the country. And if I ever want to be in the business, I should know these things.
However, I did come across a man who does. John Allen Paulos is the "Who's Counting" writer at ABC news and his story called Misleading Numbers in the News was very informational to me. Paulos focuses on three topics regularly focused on in the news: social security, illegal immigration and the number of Iraqi civilians killed.
Paulos first focuses on social security:
One can find a few stories noting that the 6.2 percent of the average American's taxable income that goes to Social Security taxes will be cut to 4.2 percent. That's a 2 percentage point cut -- not a 2 percent cut, but a 32 percent cut! This will leave a huge hole in Social Security revenues for present retirees. Why isn't the proposal fairly described as calling for a 32 percent cut in individuals' contributions? I suspect it's because most reporters don't feel confident enough of their basic arithmetic to so describe it.That sounds similar to my math problems and it seems that many other reporters feel the same way.
Paulos also points out that Time magazine claimed 3 million illegal immigrants were attempting to cross into U.S. every year, and this statistic has been accepted by other new organizations with no questions asked. However, border patrol says they apprehend around 1 million a year and they estimate 3 times that number actually attempt to get across the border.
Paulos points out:
And the factor of three mentioned by border agents is just conjecture. How does one estimate how many people are not apprehended when these latter are, almost by definition, largely invisible? Whatever the real statistic, the 3 million figure has by now attained a life of its own.The most complicated and misleading numbers are associated with Iraqi civilian deaths during the war. The two most popular studies used in news stories on this topic have been by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and by Iraq Body Count (IBC). Roberts’s claims the deaths could be as high as 100,000 where IBC claims the deaths level out to about 15,000. That is a huge difference, but both are being used in news stories. So a loyal reader of both the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times may first read that civilian deaths are around 15,000 and then read they are around 100,000. And we wonder why people don't trust the news!
I know numbers are hard to figure out for someone with a journalism degree; but, with just a couple clicks of the mouse, I think we could easily find out whether our statistics are misleading or accurate.
1 comment:
It makes me feel so much better that I'm not the only one that hates math. My brain literally shuts off when I see numbers. It just can't handle them in any mathematical kind of way.
I really liked the article you found, though--that makes me feel like there is hope for me, too! I had no idea that 2 percentage points in that instance meant 32%. I get that! That's great.
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