Numbers
So there's an election due in September and this means that both major political parties are starting to have some 'serious' debate about the state of the economy, debt, policies and so forth. One thing that I've noticed is the way all parties use numbers as talking points as metrics for success or failure.
A hypothetical example would be, "We've created 150,000 jobs and unemployment has dropped to 5.2%". At face value this seems like a good statement to make, but the more I think about it, the more it seems meaningless. Creating jobs is obviously a good thing but it's the numbers they throw around in a debate that concerns me. What does creating 150,000 jobs mean? Did the public service grow by 150,000? Are the jobs in industries or fields we should be investing in or pulling out of? Are they full time jobs or is this casual work? Similarly with the unemployment rate dropping to 5.2%, what was it before? What is the underemployment rate?
These are all questions I'm thinking of when I hear someone mention something with numbers, what do those numbers really mean in the larger context of everything else. Now obviously numbers are important, having any metrics, even flawed ones are better than having no metrics, part of the issue I realise now is that people don't really understand numbers.
A study was performed testing if people would behave differently for a reward if it was $3 or 300 cents. The results, surprisingly indicated that some people preferred 300 cents. Even if cents and dollars were switched around, people were more easily swayed by the larger number.
This knowledge has some interesting consequences for looking at political discourse. Are the politicians aware of this effect and use it to mislead or confuse citizens about the state of things? It's possible, there's limited time in media segments to accurately and adequately describe what a number truly represents, it's probably more important that the reader or viewer simply remembers that it was 150,000 jobs created or that a policy will cost $94 billion.
Speaking of policy costs, it's interesting to observe that the cost of everything is often put in vacuum. $94 billion sounds like a lot and it rightly is for an individual to own, but in the context of an entire country that has a yearly GDP in the order of $1.5 trillion ($1500 billion), it doesn't seem as large, it'll seem even smaller if instead of stating the total cost over 10 years and comparing to a yearly GDP, we state the yearly cost $9.4 billion.
I'm going to keep an eye on how it progresses and see if there's a correlation between the way the numbers are presented and how they are meant to be viewed. Obviously positive achievements would be promoted and negative achievements downplayed.
Tags: communication, math, politics