Twisting statistics

[estebanrey]

Funny when people do it to suit their political agenda. A Facebook friend posted this on his wall today....

The PCC election costs would fund the entire UK public library network for a month. Voter turnout: less than 20%. Annual visits to public libraries: 320 million.

..which immediately struck as a bit of an unfair comparison. They compare the cost to a month's running costs of the UK libraries but then compare the PCC election turnout with the yearly visitor numbers. Anyway I replied....

Odd use of statistics there. You say the cost of running the election was equal to one month of running public libraries and yet give us the annual visitor numbers when making the attendance comparison. Not really fair.

1 months of library visits would be roughly 26 million, when you factor it that is visits and not people you are looking at at least 13 million (given anyone who borrows a book must visit again to return it).

That's less that 20% of library eligible population. So in fact, you could say for the same money more people turned out for the PCC elections in one day that visit libraries in a whole month.

Now in truth I'm rather apathetic about the whole issue but it does annoy me when people use statistics blatantly to suit their agenda when they know you can look at them in many ways.