NavList:

Derrick Young, in the "Darn Old" thread, you wrote:
"You can prove anything you want using statistics - I've seen it
done too many times. "

That's one of those 'things people say', but of course it isn't true. You can't "prove anything" with statistics unless your audience is stupid. Mark Twain's version of this sentiment from over a century ago was "Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'" It's folksy and memorable (see PS). A more correct, less pithy version might be something like this:

"You can browbeat ignorant people with BAD statistical arguments and convince them that practically anything is true, but with GOOD statistical arguments, a competent and intelligent audience can be convinced that many subtle and counter-intuitive hypotheses are true or at least have merit and others are certainly false".

What we have here is a mixed situation. Some members of our NavList 'audience' have only vague notions of statistics, and so they fear that they are getting the browbeating side of the story. Other members of our 'audience' believe that they really do understand statistics, thank you very much (as they are prone to say), when in reality they have some muddled notions that are getting in the way. And some members of this audience really DO understand statistics though unfortunately it's hard to make any headway when their posts are mixed into this confusing soup. And then there's just plain pig-headed-ness which afflicts nearly everybody with an interest in celestial navigation at some point in time.

-FER
PS: So Twain attributes the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" line to Benjamin Disraeli, but apparently Disraeli never said it either. There's a long Wikipedia article on this simple phrase here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

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