Are statistics meaningless?

Question by EDWIN: Are statistics meaningless?
Mark Twain is widely accredited with saying: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

I have seen several Answers in here that attempt to use statistics to prove a point. They use things like the Infant Mortality Rate, Life Expectancy, Medical Costs as a % of GDP. Indeed, reading those statistics can certainly cause the average person to believe that health care in the United States is bad and getting worse. Yet i remain doubtful – perhaps even cynical – as to their validity.

Why?

Because the comparisons always fail to include data which would actually compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.

Lets look at health care spending as a % of GDP. At 16%, compared to 10.1% for Canada, it appears that we spend a lot. Such a comparison is only valid IF we include the GDP for the United States and Canada. The GDP of Canada was estimated to be 1.564 trillion in 2008; the GDP of the U.S. was estimated to be 14.33 trillion in 2008. Obviously, even if the U.S. reduced its spending on health care to 5% of GDP we’d still spend considerably more since our GDP is about 9.2 times larger.

Then there’s the beloved “Infant Mortality rate: At 6.2 per 1,000 births vs. Canada’s 5.04 it would appear that the U.S. isn’t doing so well. Again, important data has been omitted. Since the U.S. has a population of 303,212,123 vs Canada’s population of 33,487,208 and the birth rate in the U.S. is 13.8 per 1,000 of population vs Canada’s birth rate of 10.2 per 1,000 of population, even if we reduced our Infant Mortality Rate to Canada’s our Infant Mortality Rate would still be higher.

I’m stopping at just two examples but you should now understand why statistics are often meaningless. I once read a statistic that “… most accidents occur withing two miles of your home …”. Should I move based on that?

What say you?
**** EDIT ****

With all due respect, dwoodal, I suggest that you re-read the question and comment with a relevant answer that actually addresses it.

Best answer:

Answer by Debra E
I say that I never pay attention to statistics because not everything is taken into account.

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