Figures don't lie, but ...

... liars sure can figure; and so it goes.  As a statistician I can understand the utility of statistics, but people who have no business using statistics are making pronouncements and decisions based upon statistics. You are just a number, I am just a number, we are all just numbers. Once we become numbers, we are no longer human. We are just an abstract entity. Even with a discrete number we lose our identity to another set of abstract entities, percentages, means, medians, standard deviations. We may be part of a regression (or correlation) and we will never be able to find ourselves in there nor will anyone else. So what happens when a person is dehumanized? Well, it is easy to disregard them, to not care about them, it is easier to cause them harm.

So who are these miscreants who are dehumanizing us with their numbers; they are the statisticians, the pollsters, the economists, the CEOs, the politicians, etc. Do they even stop to think about who they effect, or do they just think about how the numbers will change? Do they even care? Not as long as the numbers support their position.

In addition, statistics are often fudged in order to gild the lilly. Take for example inflation. Inflation determined the amount of COLA that was applied to Social Security, but in the opinion of some these old geezers were getting too much money, so they changed the index. In the mean time, CEOs are hauling in millions. Take the unemployment figures that come out each month, They are based on the number of people collecting unemployment compensation, but when your benefits run out, you are no longer included in the unemployment figure. Ha, you are not only not human, but now you are not even a number! Need I say more?