Statistics are great, and at the same time awful.  They can be sliced and diced into so many ways, that it's like reading the Bible.  If you want to, you can find justification for anything in the Bible.  Likewise, with almost any statistical set, you can find a way to manipulate it, or twist it to prove whatever point you want to.  And now, because you have "statistics to back you up", your point looks all the more valid.  Take for instance some of the most basic statistics that many backers of socialized medicine use to justify large government health insurance programs.  You have the startling statistic that the United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates than Canada.  And what about the 47 million uninsured I keep hearing about?  And dear God... what about the every increasing costs of health insurance?!  We need big government to save us!!!

At various points in time on my blog I've gone to the effort to debunk and explain some of these statistics, but here is a great editorial at the New York Times that does it all in one convenient location.  Instead of just taking these statistics and automatically assuming it's the symptom of a failing system, it's important to understand the actual root causes of these numbers.  After all, if there is a real problem, we need to solve that problem, not come up with a solution that we assume will work, but won't actually do a thing, or make it worse.

But then, some people will simply always believe what they want to.  Via my blog crush.