ABSTRACT
Statistics are everywhere. We read them in advertisements for cosmetics (‘get 40 per cent softer skin with brand X!’), breakfast cereals (‘nine out of ten nutritionists recommend … ‘) and motor cars (‘28 per cent more leg room than its nearest competitor’). Politicians quote them ad nauseam, while keeping a close idea on the mountains of data provided by polling companies that purport to reveal the thoughts of the ‘average person’. The media's coverage of sport is awash with numbers and graphs of every imaginable kind. And ‘experts’ and ‘commentators’ throw them about (and, often, at each other) in order to ‘prove’ that their version of the ‘truth’ is the truest. Statistics are also a serious business. Government policies are (we hope at least sometimes) formulated according to the ‘weight of evidence’ and, as is often the case in many spheres of life, numbers seem to be considered the ‘heaviest’ of all forms of evidence. We might even say that numbers speak louder than words.
