Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America.

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Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America.

In the beginning was the Word, but the end will undoubtedly be announced with a number. A solemn poll: Sixty-eight percent disapprove of annihilation; 24 percent support it, with 8 percent undecided. Margin of error, plus or minus 3 percent.

Any consumer of news is surfeited with numbers; no statement can be made, no conclusion reached safely in public discourse nowadays without the cushion of often incomprehensible or irrelevant numbers. The presidential campaign is handicapped with almost daily poll results, even though the readers of the poll are often ignorant about how the relevant questions were asked. (The order and specific wording of the questions can affect the results.) The fate of our economy is forecast not in entrails but in numerals, huge macroaggregates that are actually measuring - what?

The sort of numbers we encounter in newspapers every day can be troublesome on many different levels. Among those problems:

* Practical problems of aggregation. Is it a count or a survey? Do you have reason to trust the sampling technique...

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