How To Manipulate Data
“Numbers don’t lie, but it’s easy to lie about them.” — Albert Einstein¹
A large part of our modern society has cult-like faith in data. If you show a fancy-looking pie chart or a colorful scatter plot, people will find your statements three to five times more trustworthy (source).
Ask anyone who has worked in a big corporation if you don’t believe me; they will all agree many PowerPoint presentations include manipulative lies.
Fun fact, the link I used as a source above is an article about fake scientific research. But it doesn’t matter because while 87% of people don’t click on the links, 85% find stories more credible if they include links (source).
(Yes. I did it again, but with a different article this time.)
After manipulating you in the introduction, I will show you how to manipulate data, whether you’re an unknown blogger like me, a journalist working for a renowned newspaper, or a scientist with a Nobel prize.
#1 — Naming the Data
“Life expectancy is the death-weighted average of the reciprocal of the survival-specific force of mortality.” — Source
Which one sounds better? Bold or italic?
