"What Is A Very Bad Statistic People Should Know?" (40 Answers)

Facts and stats are, at times, quite counterintuitive. They sound weird. They feel like they shouldn’t work. But the findings are (usually) backed up by rigorous testing, peer reviews, follow-up studies, and meta-analyses. 

You shouldn’t trust anything you stumble across online blindly without first considering its trustworthiness. At the same time, cross-referencing every single claim would eat up most of the time in your day. Not to mention how mentally exhausting it would be!

So your best bet is to do some light research if you think a fact sounds iffy. Look at multiple sources and figure out which ones you can most often rely on to get things right. Sensational headlines might get clicks and views, but they might rely on a single new study that may need more follow-up research. 

Broadly speaking, you want to consider the potential biases of the source making a certain claim. Try to think about what their goal might be. Are they representing a certain product or brand? Do they have any identifiable political leanings? Is there a deeper agenda behind the data?

The idea is for you to try to be as neutral as possible and to look at the facts as they are. That means removing all the emotional reactions about how you (dis)like this and that data because they (don’t) conform to your current worldview. Though we’ll never be completely unbiased, we can do our best to try to be as objective as we can. And that attitude should help us filter out much of the fake news floating around on social media and the news.

The most reliable sources do very heavy fact-checking. They cross-reference facts and check the validity of each and every claim. They’re also very open about their potential biases.

All sources make errors from time to time. That’s inevitable. But the very best sources own up when they make a mistake—they don’t shy away from making corrections. Moreover, they’ll usually paint a nuanced and complex picture of reality. On the flip side, someone who makes the world seem overly simplistic or black-and-white is either oversimplifying things, misinterpreting reality, or wants to push a certain agenda.