Tuesday, August 19, 2014

The pay gap that might not be there

Need to prove an argument? Chuck in some statistics. Any old ones will do.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if a journalist is ignorant of statistics or is being deliberately misleading. Like most of us, they seldom question statistics that seem to prove what they already think they know. 

The Guardian is no better or worse than most, and it's been doing a lot of it lately. Some of its statistics are misleading, but mostly they simply don't say what they seem to say. Whether the writer knows this and is trying to pull a fast one or just doesn't understand what the numbers mean is hard to say. 

Take this example, in a recent article about how the press should report suicide in the wake of Robin Williams' death: