It’s easy to lie with statistics

In a recent study, it was shown that Chick-Fil-A had the fastest drive-thru speeds of all similar restaurants.

The exact same study also showed that Chick-Fil-A had the slowest drive-thru speeds of all similar restaurants.

How is that possible? Both of those statements are true, and both are accurate. In the study in question, it was determined that Chick-Fil-A had the longest total wait time in drive-thru lines (“the slowest”), but handled each car much more quickly than any other restaurant (“the fastest”). As you may have gathered, they simply have way more people visit their drive-thru each day than most restaurants.

Or how about these?

I could say “Driving was more dangerous in 1950” and I’d be right, and you could say that “Driving was safer in 1950” and you’d be right too…

• Driving was more dangerous in 1950. In 1950, 22 out of 100k died in accidents, while in 2017 on 11 out of 100k died in accidents.
• Driving is more dangerous now. More people died in car accidents in 2017 than they did in 1950 (37k vs 33k).

We see this constantly with the new media, and it can be easy to be fooled. Darrell Huff has a great book titled “ How to Lie with Statistics “ and he explains this in much more detail. One quick example he mentions is that:

It assumed that newspaper space given to crime reporting is a measure of crime rate.