There was a claim that the toothpaste company Colgate used to make all the time on television. They said that “80 percent of dentists recommend Colgate.” Technically, the figure was accurate. Colgate did send around a survey. And when they got the survey back, 80% of dentists had indeed indicated that they recommended Colgate. But ultimately, the advertising regulators came down hard on Colgate and forced them to pull the ad off the air. And they did that because Colgate left out an important piece of information: the survey allowed dentists to recommend multiple brands. So, yes, 80% of dentists did recommend Colgate. But 80% of dentists also recommended Colgate’s competitors.
We’re bombarded with misrepresentations like this so often — from politicians, advertisers and so on — that pretty much everyone understands that statistics are very often misleading, at best. That’s why we have the famous line: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
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