It’s never been easier to find a statistic – but so many of us are still massively confused when it comes to basic figures
If you want to know what proportion of the UK population is obese or immigrant, as with so many questions, you just have to Google it. You might be offered a variety of statistics, but you will certainly have a clear order of magnitude and you will be able to source each and, with a little effort, find out the basis of the calculation. Yet so many of us have a massively distorted view of figures including proportions and percentages.
As this “Guardian’ newspaper editorial puts it:
“If 50% of the population doesn’t know what 50% means, then it’s no surprise to discover that the public often goes wrong in placing numbers on social concerns. Ipsos Mori recently published a cross-country report that established that Britain thinks of itself as thinner, more diverse and older than it really is. That is to say, we underestimate the proportion of overweight or obese adults (guessing 44%, rather than a real figure of 62%), overestimate the immigrant population (25% in the imagination, 13% in reality), and also our average age, put at a decidedly senior 51, when the real middle Briton is only 40.”
In many cases, people’s distorted view of figures reflects their political and social prejudices:
“In other contexts, warped perceptions feed back to warp reality. John Hills of the LSE has collected a number of myths around social security that have shaped the debate about UK welfare reform. The share of the welfare budget going on unemployment benefits? Estimated at 40%, when the reality (depending on precise definitions) is closer to 1%. Fraud? Estimated at around 20%, when the official figures stand at 0.7%. The proportion of new jobseekers who it is presumed will be still signing on a year down the line? 50%, compared with a reality of less than 10%. All of these myths, of course, encourage hostile ideas about a lazy under-class subsidised by others.”