Statistics, Averages and Shock Value

[orcus116]

I was going back and forth whether to post this in here or GD but I figured there might be a bit more serious discuss here. Now I'm sure you've all seen those commercials "for a cause". If it's a bad cause (ex: smoking, poverty, etc) there usually comes along some statistic out of nowhere like "1 in every X number of people suffers/dies every day" or similar. Does anyone actually believe those statistics? Are they even real or are they just fucking with daily/monthly/yearly averages to promote some sort of shock value? I take a look at a site like this:

https://www.worldometers.info/

It's like a whole site of perfectly timed ratios that are born out of some data but have no place in reality. Like are 6-7 hectacres of forest really lost every single minute? Really? I really could be naive about this whole thing but I can't help but laugh every time an anti-smoking commercial comes on and boosts "1 person dies every 7 seconds from lung cancer". Bull-fucking-shit, and they know it.

[Implode]

What do you mean by "Have no place in reality?"

[orcus116]

Most the death tolls, especially the "1 in every X seconds". They're usually such a catastrophically newsworthy rate that they're impossible to be true. and don't account for fluke spikes and the like that might work to their advantage to skew results. Advocates against smoking, for example, might take all lung cancer death totals to use in their favor because smoking is linked to lung cancer. There's no real context behind these stats yet they just get posted up as "shocking" results.

[Sigz]

They're usually such a catastrophically newsworthy rate that they're impossible to be true

[GuineaPig]

Smoking causes ~5 and half million deaths worldwide every year.  That boils down to ~15,000 a day, ~627 an hour, and about 10 a minute.

So it's more like one every six seconds.

[orcus116]

Smoking "related", meaning any number of things data collectors want that fattens that number. I wouldn't be surprised if that number included any deaths related to the manufacturing of the pesticides used to grow the tobacco plants and shit like that. I know you're a smart guy but you can't seriously take that "1 every 6 seconds" number and believe it, right?

[GuineaPig]

Yes.  There almost 7 billion people in the world, and over a billion are smokers.  Those are huge numbers.

[Adami]

Smoking "related", meaning any number of things data collectors want that fattens that number. I wouldn't be surprised if that number included any deaths related to the manufacturing of the pesticides used to grow the tobacco plants and shit like that. I know you're a smart guy but you can't seriously take that "1 every 6 seconds" number and believe it, right?

In the time it took you to type this, 8,000,000,000 people died.

[Scheavo]

Most the death tolls, especially the "1 in every X seconds". They're usually such a catastrophically newsworthy rate that they're impossible to be true. and don't account for fluke spikes and the like that might work to their advantage to skew results. Advocates against smoking, for example, might take all lung cancer death totals to use in their favor because smoking is linked to lung cancer. There's no real context behind these stats yet they just get posted up as "shocking" results.

Yes.  There almost 7 billion people in the world, and over a billion are smokers.  Those are huge numbers.

With a number this high, uncommon will be in high numbers.