Why do statistics exist?

[FallenAngel86]

Everyone that either watches the news or reads the paper,knows that the media almost always reveals the suspects race when they report stories about crimes. Why do they feel the need to do this? Why do statistics even exist? I feel like it just further perpetuates the negative stereotypes pertaining to race.

[largecracker618]

statisitics prove a point someone wants to make that mean they are not absolute truth. in the case you're talking about the media has to do things that way to spread fear for the agenda. like until a white person goes on a killing spree that make sure to keep middle eastern people terrorist and blac k people crimes in the news.

[Miss Fields]

If you ever take a journalism class like I did this past semester, you will learn why they exist. Its not just to prove a point it is to make certain groups of people, especially black people, look bad. Statistically black people are this and that etc. Its all mumbo jumbo and an agenda by the news media.

[SpongeBobTheBumder]

45% of statistics are true and the other 72% are made up on the spot.

[Laurence]

It all began in Sweden. Sweden in the 17th century was a great power: the Baltic was called the Swedish Lake. Overly ambitious and costly military campaigns and the rise of Russia under Peter the Great caused a serious decline in Swedish power and its government began wondering why. So, for a start they decided around 1745 to count how many Swedes there were. They were amazed to find that their expectation of about 20 million was a tenfold exaggeration. The result revolutionized Swedish policy, and they decided counting was a good thing. Since it was done by the state for the state they called it statistics, but it is really just counting. Quantify and you will understand! Other countries gradually followed: the USA because its constitution involved dividing power among the states according to population size. Britain's decennial census began on the first year of the new century, 1801, but Parliament was afraid Whitehall might use the information for something other than just counting the population, so, until 1841, the census office had to destroy all its records as soon as it had published the total. After that other questions were added on anything that might help run the country. Mathematicians discovered to use numbers to make predictions based on trends over successive counts, and to forcast for the whole out of small samples. Then social scientists, businessmen and other groups extended number-collecting to their own particular interests. Like anything else they can be abused, expecially to deceive those who do not understand them. As Benjamin Disraeli said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." Statistics enabled doctors working for the non-smoking Adolf Hitler to show the connection between tobacco and cancer, but the Anglo-American Tobacco companies convinced everyone that German statistics were wicked and untrustworthy, giving them another thrity years and more of profit making before British and American statisticians came up with the same result. Recently anti-immigration newspapers have found and published the statistic that twenty percent of crime in London is committed by immigrants. Anyone who does not know that immigrants and their descendants make up twenty percent of Londoners is duly horrified. Statistics, like anything else, can be used as a weapon against the ignorant. Women have, statistically, smaller brains than men. If you do not know that the average woman is physically smaller than the average man, you can use this statistic to give a spurious statistical basis to misogyny. But sometimes the media is afraid to reveal race. In NYC a few years back a Black woman stole a child. Fury and panic, but no child found until the media finally admitted that the stolen baby was also black! Remember that the media exists to sell advertising space. As long as advertisers believe that their main target audience is racist, the media will continue to promote racism. As the owner of Google has just reminded us in another connection, this is just how capitalism works. It has nothing to do with statistics per se. Medieval European "civilization" was oppressing women, murdering Jews and importing Black slaves long, long, before statistics was ever heard of!.

[BlackAnimeNerd17]

Statistics ain't sh*t. I'm taking AP statistics in high school and they're not at all representative of the entire population they are trying to represent. Statistics are usually inaccurate and false and overexaggerated

[Ice_Tropical.]

Statistics show a guesstimate of something. Its a way of pre telling things from past figures. I like statistics.