Thursday, December 10, 2009

Stunning Statistics



This is really fun:





Here's the summary if you can't watch videos:

Well, here's the Rasmussen poll Fox & Friends cited. They asked respondents: "In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?" According to the poll, 35 percent thought it very likely, 24 percent somewhat likely, 21 percent not very likely, and 5 percent not likely at all (15 percent weren't sure).

Fox News' graphics department added together the "very likely" and "somewhat likely" numbers to reach 59 percent, and called that new group "somewhat likely." Then, for some reason, they threw in the 35 percent "very likely" as their own group, even though they already added that number to the "somewhat likely" percentage. Then they mashed together the "not very likely" and "not likely at all" groups, and threw the 15 percent who were unsure into the waste bin. Voila — 120 percent.

It looks to me like one of the people in the video sorta caught the error because he was going to say something about ninety percent of Americans there.

I went back in the chain of evidence and found something else rather stunning in that Rasmussen poll:

2* Do scientists agree on global warming or is there significant disagreement within the scientific community?

25% Most scientists agree on global warming
52% There is significant disagreement within the scientific community
23% Not sure

The percentages refer to how many respondents agreed with each of the three options.