Lies, Damn Lies, and StatisticsWhat should we make of them? You have heard the phrase, no doubt, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics." It’s purported to have been uttered by the famous British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. His pronouncement refers to the ever increasing persuasive power of numbers, the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments, and the tendency of people to disparage statistics that do not support their own positions. Mark Twain wrote, "Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'" So What of Our Online Statistics? Pure Maths or Snake Oil? Today we get bombarded a with a myriad of emails, tweets, blog posts, RSS feeds etc extolling the virtue of big lists or little lists with great ROI, or “spend $5 and get million followers on Twitter in three weeks.”We accuse the politicians and salesmen off stretching the statistics to suit their own arguments. But Wait. What about You and Me? Well I don’t really know about you, but I have to admit (and please don’t tweet this all over the universe or should I say Twitterverse) that I occasionally, very occasionally,find myself saying that I have X thousand followers on Twitter and X thousand friends on Facebook and X thousand contacts at LinkedIn and I have had x thousands of views on a pretty boring Youtube video I uploaded on the 10th July 2009. Believe Them or Not It sounds impressive. And it did take a lot of strategy, effort and a decent amount of luck to achieve those numbers. BUT, the reality is, that no matter how many thousands of followers I have on any form of social media, the majority will not read everything I write or watch every video I produce. How do I know this? The statistics, that is the analytics, tell me. And in this case the statistics don’t lie. The Times, Are They a-changing? That said, here is a 5 minute video (not mine) from YouTube that has some very interesting statistics. At the time of posting this it was about a year old. Even so, think about your business, your work, your organisation, your country or indeed your lifestyle. What does it mean? I’ll leave you to answer that question for yourself.
Lance Scoular, Did You Know
The Savvy Navigator
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