{"id":7016,"date":"2015-04-29T10:41:25","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T09:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peakepro.com\/?p=7016"},"modified":"2015-04-29T10:41:25","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T09:41:25","slug":"how-to-lie-with-statistics-and-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/7016-how-to-lie-with-statistics-and-poetry.html","title":{"rendered":"How to Lie With Statistics (and Poetry)"},"content":{"rendered":"
“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant”
\n-Emily Dickinson<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nIt’s pretty easy, really. Take a four-thousand-year-old universal human tradition–say, poetry–and use statistical data within a relatively tiny segment–say, the last ten years in America–to extrapolate into sweeping conclusions.<\/p>\n
In a recent article for the Huffington Post<\/a>, I call out this tactic employed by a Washington Post article to once again predict poetry’s imminent extinction (this time with helpful graphs).<\/p>\n
This of course prompted a friendly debate on Twitter with some mathematical philosophers about poetry’s inherent lack of truth due to its freedom from alethic modality (as you would expect).<\/p>\n
Still, I contend that it is easier to lie with statistics than poetry, since one engages statistics expecting objective truth, and often discovers subjective misinterpretation; whereas one enters poetry expecting subjectivity, but often discovers something universal. So much of deception, after all, depends on confidence.<\/p>\n