Yep  .. You're right about the selective use of statistics.

Way back in time in my working life one of the most read volumes in my management theory library was ' How To Lie With Statistics'.   I used to loan out my books to our staff & younger managers & have Q&A / discussion sessions when they were returned.  It was undoubtedly the most popular, so much so that someone wanted it more than me & never returned it.

In fact, it detailed many of the errors made by people when using or interpreting statistics.   

Though I must admit to employing a few of the fallacies where it served my purpose eg. using inappropriate graph scales to exaggerate a fall or rise, or to find an error in a set of numbers and use that to dismiss the whole analysis as flawed.  I do miss the thrust & parry of those days, but just for a fleeting moment.

Having said that, I still found the article a good read.

edit .. I think the Book 'How to Lie with Statistics' is the one by Darrell Huff on this site.  Not certain. Its been about 25 years since I 'lost' it.

https://www.nateliason.com/notes/lie-statistics-darrell-huff

ps.  On the subject of Wealth distribution, when I studied Economics fleetingly in the 70's much was made of the Lorenz Curve which demonstrated how income/wealth was distributed across the population.  It is only recently that that aspect of our economy is getting attention as the wealth gap widens or the curve gets steeper .. exponentially perhaps.  

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lorenz-curve.asp

-- Edited by Cupie on Saturday 27th of October 2018 10:27:45 PM

theres a lot of left wing spin in there if you read between the lines...

When you live and work in different countries for extended periods you start to get a bit of a feeling for what the locals think. In my experience the majority of people believe that their own country was the best place in the world to live. I found a lot of would be immigrants asking me whether I would help them get to Australia mainly because they saw us as being a wealthy nation who would help them out financially when they got here. Recently when working in the Gulf westerners like me were constantly hounded by people to help them get to places like Australia - these weren't the locals but itinerant workers from India, Phillipines, Bangladesh, Thailand etc. who had found it almost impossible to meet the criteria that they needed to immigrate..

As Aussies do we really feel that insecure that we need to find articles or statistics to tell us that Australia as a nation is financially well off - I suspect that most of us are probably already aware of that fact ? How succesive state or federal governments either manage or mismanage our wealth is a completely different story.

Cheers

BB

Ron-D wrote:

---

Left wing biase is something that the abc network has big time I know we should not get political on the forum,but its paid for by both right and left voters and to me its the elephant in the room ,And its disgusting and wrong morally and ethically.

The Murdock press is over the top right wing but not paid for with tax payers money...

probably closed the thred down with these comments my apology....

---

 I made no mention of the ABC & its perceived bias.

My sources, including the one in the original post, are generally funded by subscription & not part of the ABC. 

The point that I often make, is that those who are conditioned by the right wing Murdock version of events, view a more centralist  (ABC?) view as being left leaning.

Just sayin'

Having said that we are all entitled to our personal views & that's a very good thing.