Questions to ask for figuring out Bad Statistics

1. Q U E S T I O N S
T O A S K F O R
I D E N T I F Y I N G
B A D
S T A T I S T I C S

2. Can you see the uncertainity?

3. • Political polls are always
uncertain considering the
ambiguity of the data.
• Just like when Hillary was
supposed to win the US election
And then Donald Trump
happened.
• Averages on the graph needs
a serious outlook because of the
huge amount of uncertainty
involved.

5. • Check for the gaps provided on the data.
• There are chances that the information
might be overlooked
• Data Visualizations play a major role on
seeing the uncertain events that are
highly unlikely to happen.

6. Can I see myself on the data?

7. • Only when you scrutinize
the data provided to you.
• Only when you
understand what the data
is about.
• Step into the shoes of the
person who depicted the
graph for understanding
what’s really wrong about
the data.

9. • Averages can only be used to predicting the entire
outcome.
• It can never be used for finding out a specific
position on the graph.
• Looking into the details will reveal a lot about the
data pictured in terms of its genuinenity.

10. How was the data collected?

11. • It is extremely important to find out the source of the data.
• More than that the way using which data was collected is
important.
• Because people collect data in different ways possible.
• Not all methods for data collection be necessarily correct. This
would lead to huge time waste while doing research on incorrect
data.
• Therefore, bad data ruins the day. Data collection plays a major
role on the outcome of a statistics project.

13. Relevance to Manager in India:
• Can you tell me something about the source of data you used in
your analysis?
• Are you sure the sample data are representative of the population?
• Are there any outliers in your data distribution? How did they affect
the results?
• What assumptions are behind your analysis?
• Are there any conditions that would make your assumptions
invalid?