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I know how to use statistics to tell nearly any story though, and I would love to trust statistics…

It has to do with unknown unknowns.



And I know how to tell any story, it's called lying. Whether you are lying with statistics or lying in a story does not matter. In the end it all comes down to whether you can validate what you've been told. Most people however will skip validation in favor of 'this sounds reasonable' and most people have a worse intuition for statistics than for stories. That's on them though, let's not blame statistics for that shortcoming.


I'd prefer a lie with a story over a lie with statistics.

At least the former doesn't pretend to be scientific or objective, it's just a story.


The point is that if you have over 100 correlates to assess a situation, any particular story you try to tell is probably a lie even with the best intentions.




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