Wrong numbers: How bad data leads us astray

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Statistics dictate policy – but what if our data sets are wrong? How are numbers manipulated for political gain? These are questions that House of Commons Library statistician Georgina Sturge answers in her new book Bad Data: How Governments, Politicians and the Rest of Us Get Misled by Numbers. She tells Alex Andreou about how data is used to make policy, how it is being manipulated, and how to tell good data from bad. “Numbers can’t speak for themselves.” “Governments are presenting data as if it is free of ideology.” www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Alex Andreou. Lead Producer: Jacob Jarvis. Producers: Alex Rees and Jet Gerbertson. Assistant producer: Kasia Tomasiewicz. Audio production by Jade Bailey. Music: Kenny Dickinson. Group editor: Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
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1:13.0	Why do we have the slowest growth in the G7? Jeremy Hunt was asked.
1:18.0	We are the only G7 economy to still be smaller than before the pandemic.
1:22.0	That's not true, Hunt responded.
1:25.0	We actually have the highest growth in the G7 this year.
1:29.0	If you torture data enough, one of my economics professors used to say, it will confess
1:35.5	whatever you want it to. My guest today is a statistician at the House of Commons
1:40.4	Library advising MPs of all parties.
1:43.2	Her specialisms are migration and justice
1:46.2	and she has just published their wonderfully surprising book,
	...

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