I caught part of last night's vice presidential debate and two things struck me more than any other:
- How matter-of-factly both candidates recounted endless numbers of statistics proving that they were right and
- How different the pictures were painted by their respective statistics.
Kind of reminds of a small little book I bought when I was studying in the UK titled How to Lie with Statistics.
The two vice-presidential candidates are not alone in this spin. Arnold Kling used data presented in a recent Washington Post article to contradict the conclusions of the article (an interesting read via Craig Newmark). And Tom over at Iron Monkey posted an excellent step-by-step illustration of how to scare people with statistics.
Some have likened last night's debate to a schoolyard argument between two tattle-tales and it keeps
going: the Bush/Cheney Campaign published a list today of 14 inaccurate statements made by John Edwards last night and the Kerry/Edwards Campaign is vigorously blogging its take on facts and reality.
Who to trust? More than 50% of those surveyed....
Postscript: Tara weighs in on last night's debate from a debater's perspective. (More after the jump)
Tara:
From an Aristotelian standpoint, persuasion contains 3 elements: Ethos, Pathos and Logos (the canons). Respectively, these equate to the person's character, appeal to emotion, and appeal to reason. When you put it all together, I think Dick Cheney torpedoed John Edwards.
