Using an internet forum for Social Research

[seireikhaan]

Yes I know, but that is the problem I would have with this data - the whole purpose appears to be to draw false conclusions. However, now I am really interested in exploring the similarities between socio-economic class and favourite food type.

Not at all. If that were the point, why do businesses utilize statistics so much? They need to know who to market a product to, where to market it to, where to expand, how they are perceived, etc... Not, of course, that statistics can't be used to draw false conclusions- however, this tends to be much more out of political or cultural convictions, not out of any fault of the statistic. Again, a statistic is just a number- what you draw from it is what's truly important.

[CountArach]

Not at all. If that were the point, why do businesses utilize statistics so much? They need to know who to market a product to, where to market it to, where to expand, how they are perceived, etc... Not, of course, that statistics can't be used to draw false conclusions- however, this tends to be much more out of political or cultural convictions, not out of any fault of the statistic. Again, a statistic is just a number- what you draw from it is what's truly important.

I can't help but feel we are arguing around each other... yet, there are most certainly ways that statistics can be made completely useless and redundant - by way of providing information about a product/person that is misleading then trying to draw an opinion about that. Look at just about any internet poll that links to a damning story for an example of this.

[Vuk]

I can't help but feel we are arguing around each other... yet, there are most certainly ways that statistics can be made completely useless and redundant - by way of providing information about a product/person that is misleading then trying to draw an opinion about that. Look at just about any internet poll that links to a damning story for an example of this.

lol, here is the thing with statistics, they represent something (whether that thing is important or not), simple. You just gotta be smart to tell what they really represent and if it is meaningful or not. It is easy for people to twist statistics around to make em look like something else, but they are always what they are, people just need to be smart enough to tell for themselves what the statistics mean. The fault therefore lies not in the statistics, but in the dishonesty of people who try to use them dishonestly, and the stupidity of people who are not smart enough to tell what they really mean. We just need to use predjudice when looking at them.