This is Stephanie from StatisticsHowTo.com,
and in this video I will be showing you a
few examples of misleading statistics in advertising
and in the news.
This first example by Colgate is pretty famous.
See here, it says it’s more than 80% of
dentists recommend Colgate.
You would think by reading that, that 80% of dentists
only recommend Colgate and 20% of dentists
recommend something else.
Well the truth was dentists were given a list
of options and they could pick several toothpastes.
So this 80% of dentists were also recommending
other brands.
This particular advertisement ended up being
banned by the Advertising Standard Authority
in the United Kingdom for being complete rubbish.
This is a pair of Reebok's easy tone shoes.
Apparently they could trim your butt and tone
your calves by something like 11% or 28%.
The figure was complete codswallop and
the Federal Trade Commission said that Reebok
had to pay $25M to consumers in a settlement
over a deceptive advertising.
Let us talk about some misleading statistics
in the news.
In 2013 Michele Bachmann, a Republican from
Minnesota said that 70 cents of every dollar
spent on food stamps goes to Bureaucrats.
This figure 70 cents of every dollar is complete
rubbish.
As far as the food stamp program goes, the
figure is actually much, much, much lower.
It is one third of 1% goes to the bureaucrats,
the rest goes to the needy.
That correct figure comes from some Federal
Budget documents you can find the link to that
on my article about Misleading Statistics
on StatisticsHowTo.
Perhaps the most famous case of misleading
statistics in the news in recent years was
the case of Sally Clark.
who was convicted of murdering her two young
children.
She was sent to prison for life and subsequently
was freed after it was found that the statistics
used in her murder trial would just completely
wrong.
There were not intentionally wrong, at least
we don’t think they were intentionally wrong
but the jury was misled into believing the
statistics proved.
Sally Clark's guilt when in fact they probably
proved her innocence.
You can find that article and more on our website
StatisticsHowTo.com.
Thanks for checking in.
