Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Chapter 13: Graphs
In Chapter 13, I read about many concepts. For example, misleading claims with number, graphs, and averages. The chapter was basically talking about how certain stats and numbers can fool people and mislead them. One concept that I was really interested in was the section about graphs. Epstein talks about how graphs are useful at times, but we have to be careful when reading graphs because some of them are wrong and can give us the wrong information. You have to even pay attention to the angles of the lines because some can either be too narrow or too wide. Or a company can exaggerate their numbers just to persuade the customers that their business is progressing. So basically what Epstien is trying to say is to do more research on companies to make sure their statistics are correct. I see graphs all the time, and now I will make sure to look at them more carefully.
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Your post really stood out to me since i did my first one on graphs as well. You did a good job defining it and talking about what Epstein says about it. It’s so true that companies exaggerate their numbers to mislead us consumers when trying to purchase a product. It’s all about persuading the buyer in their favor. You did a good job of showing that. Now we all know that we have to look at graphs more carefully because they can be deceitful.
ReplyDeleteVery good job on this post. I found it very useful to read this from this post because it seemed like you knew what you were talking to. I liked how you chose the graph in this chapter to discuss because i had a hard time understanding it. It is true that graphs can give false information and it is hard to see through a graph so people can trick you into believing them. I will make sure to look at graphs more carefully and thoroughly now because of how people can manipulate you into believing in what they are trying to say. Great job!
ReplyDeleteYou picked a great topic to talk about. I wrote about the same thing. I like how you listed all the topics in chapter 13 and then went into detail about one of them. The description you gave about graphs and how they can be tricky and misleading to the eye was great. Your eyes can be fooled easily so one way to prevent that is by having knowledge and realizing that what you’re seeing is not always right. Researching the topic of whatever graph you are presented with will be very helpful when trying to read over the graph. Many graphs are misleading and plotted a certain way to make that company look good. They will go as far as spacing the scales far apart to show a major increase or decrease, even though it could have been just a slight change.
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Linton,
ReplyDeleteThere is a famous quote that goes; “There are lies, damned lies, and then statistics.” Whenever I read about statistics or numbers, this humorous quote comes to mind. I honestly enjoyed reading your post but I would have to disagree with your post to a certain extent. When you say that companies lie about or exaggerate their numbers, this isn’t necessarily true. When companies present their graphs, they actually just set them up in a specific way in order to manipulate the appearance of their results. For example, lets say there are two companies. Company A does better than company B by 50 points. If company A were to create a bar graph to show the results of the two, they would choose a ‘y-axis’ with intervals of 1 to show the large difference between the two. On the other hand, company B would choose a ‘y-axis’ with large intervals to make the difference seem insignificant. Two graphs, the same numbers, but different looks.
-Melvin Banner
I've never been a huge fan of including numbers as part of an argument. I have a pretty large interest in English, and want to get a minor in it. I mention this because personally I've used numbers in an argument in such a way that I was able to manipulate my meaning without directly lying. I feel like a lot of people and organizations do things like this in an attempt to persuade people to their way of thinking. Oftentimes there are multiple ways to interpret the percentages and statistics people include in arguments. Usually, the true meaning is hidden or unstated. While it's harder to mislead people with graphs since they're so simple, I still think it's important to be able to recognize inconsistencies and flaws in arguments.
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