8 Comments
User's avatar
drsmithy's avatar

"But when a chart shows something terrible about Kids These Days!, you should be sniffing very hard for something dodgy."

Needs its own Appendix added to "How to lie with Statistics".

Esquatcho's avatar

My favourite is the non-zero axis intercept to make small changes look critical

Alias El’Pseudonym III's avatar

That Australian public sector one makes me want to do some digging. There are many people who are private sector consultants who are full time government contractors, I wonder how they get counted? I think this is mainly a federal and state thing rather than a local thing, but also, this thought is based on Speculation et al (2026), so it could be way off the mark.

Cameron Murray's avatar

For sure, this is true. But it is also true in many peer countries. So very hard to get a good, clean comparison. For Australia, the clearest data that would raise concerns is the rise in the public sector employment and spending share in recent years.

Kiera Kelly's avatar

I remember moving from Australia to France and the French complaining about the bureaucracy. It was a piece of cake compared to Australia, and I could barely speak French!

Human Supremacist Institute's avatar

> For example, in 2021, the number of 19-year-old respondents who did not have sex surged, but then collapsed to its lowest level ever in 2022.

So basically people didn't get to lose their virginities during a global pandemic? Who would have thought?

User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 8, 2025
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Cameron Murray's avatar

Yes. I showed the timing of public interest in myocarditis being related to the vaccine uptake and not COVID using Google Trends. Those were real search trends.