In his article “How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next”, William Davies argues that statistics are tools the government uses to simplify or quantify the intricate inner workings of the country. Two key statistics he points out are gross domestic product (GDP) and the unemployment rate. Politicians use these two numbers to summarize the economic climate of the United States. This is dangerous, however, as neither GDP nor the unemployment rate can accurately describe the economic health of an individual or of a small town. While the country as a whole might be prospering, a small steel or coal town is reeling from the decreasing opportunity in these industries. People start to feel alienated when they aren’t don’t feel like they are being properly represented.
“When macroeconomics is used to make a political argument, this implies that the losses in one part of the country are offset by gains somewhere else.” This idea summarizes the mistrust and contempt that people feel towards statistics. Politicians are very eager to craft a narrative about their superior performance based off one numerical figure. Whether this narrative is true or not does not matter though as it might not reflect an individual’s life experience. The article presents the case of immigration. While immigration has mostly been determined to improve a country’s economy, it will also have an adverse effect on certain people as they face more competition for employment. These affected parties’ come to not only resent statistics, but also the author behind them. This can be seen in a study conducted before the 2016 presidential election as 68% of Trump supporters said that they distrusted economic data published by the federal government.
To combat this distrust, it is pertinent for the author to understand their audience. In my research for my campaign piece, I found that white middle-class suburban families have become the majority of the recipients of school vouchers over urban black families that are more in need of vouchers. This was a statistic I chose to omit from my piece did not want to alienate the majority of my audience. Statistics are a powerful tool, but must be carefully tailored to suit the audience.
I really like a lot of the points you made for this blog post about statistics and the public’s overall distrust of them. It seems like people’s life experiences hold more truth than statistics and figures that public officials preach. This seems to be a logical conclusion despite the contradicting statistics. It was an interesting point you made when presenting the issue of immigration. On one hand, immigration has mostly been determined to improve a country’s economy. However, this does not really take into account the increased competition in the job market for many citizens.
The next big issue for us, as students, is how we incorporate this knowledge of distrust with statistics into our pieces. As you wrote, it may be best just to omit certain statistics. Another strategy can be to thoroughly explain the method of data collection, how the statistic was formed, and who it applies to. If this is all done properly, I believe that statistic can be effective.
Statistics can be a powerful and convincing tool for an author or speaker, if they use them correctly. But you are right when you that you have to carefully pick and choose the statistics that will be the most effective for your argument. But, they can also be very misleading to your audience. You have to be careful that the statistics that you have are accurate and that they represent the exactly what it is they are meant to represent. This applies to both the speaker and the audience. Speakers have been known to cherry pick the data that seemingly supports their argument, but is actually not completely true and sometime 100% false, so that their audience will believe them. For example, climate change and global warming skeptics have done this with global temperature data. The global temperature in 2011 was cooler than the global temperature in 2010 due to a natural fluctuation. Skeptics have pointed to this to “disprove” the climate change narrative, when in fact the overall trend of global temperature is upward.