4 ms·
im always curious about people (not you, the person you are replying to) who pop out metrics like these and mis-interpret them (not maliciously I'm assuming). I
by zht 4y ago
im always curious about people (not you, the person you are replying to) who pop out metrics like these and mis-interpret them (not maliciously I'm assuming). I always wonder how many people they've repeated those facts to (most of whom won't fact check or think twice about it) and how many of THOSE people repeated them to other people THEY know.
- twoodfin 4y agoI'm less interested in the people since it's pretty obvious why these "factoids" are so appealing to believe & spread. I find it more fun to catalog the more common ones and track their origins. Two of my favorites: - "Medical debt is the #1 cause of bankruptcies." This goes back to a handful of papers by, among others, now-Senator Elizabeth Warren and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health. There was a lot of back-and-forth at the time, but I'll sum up the objection to the thrust of the papers and the factoid: People who go into bankruptcy tend to have all kinds of debt, and the authors made no rigorous attempt to establish the specific "but-for" causality of medical debt. - "40% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck." This comes, AFAICT, from the annual Federal Reserve "SHED" survey on household economic well-being. There's lots of good data in these, but downers somehow latched onto the "How would you handle an unexpected $400 expense?" question and interpreted any response other than paying it off in cash or equivalent as "living paycheck-to-paycheck". FWIW, the "pay it off" response has become more popular every year of the survey's existence, rising from 50% in 2013 to 68% in 2021[1]. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2021-report-economic-well-being-us-households-202205.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2021-repor...