Episode 73: How Politics Distorts Our Perceptions
Words & Numbers
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The Problem With Statistics
The researchers asked people who identified as Democrat, what fraction of Democrats are union members? And the answer that Democrats gave was about 40%. That's another impossible number. When they ask Republican subjects what fraction of Republicans earn over quarter million dollars a year, they answered 33%. Oh, come on. The logic doesn't work in that direction. So what we do is we take these little things that we observe and magnify them to represent the party as a whole. What both sides of the aisle end up getting are caricatures of the other.
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