cherrybim-
Dr. Pepper – “Numbers don’t lie, they are what they are. The way they are presented is what may trick people”
So they do lie.
By “numbers” I mean raw data. Let’s take an extreme example 2 girls in the graduating class of 2000. Now, 9 years later, 1 is married and 1 is single.
There are ways to bias this data and make it look like a crisis:
“50% of the class is still single” or
“Out of the whole class only one girl is married”.
While each statement is technically correct I would venture that most people would consider them very close to a lie, if not an outright lie. The raw data itself (1 married, 1 single) is what it is and does not lie.
“I do know that the principle makes it his business to be at the weddings of as many of his students as possible.”
This is a poor way of conducting a statistical survey and the results would be meaningless. In addition, school personnel come and go and many graduates do not keep ties with the school for many various reasons. To conduct a meaningful study the researcher must use accepted methodology and research standards.
This kind of research is very discrete (either a status of “married” or “single”). The school my wife went to keeps updated alumni lists (for fundraisers) so it does not matter which school personnel came and went, the files are still at the school. Even if some students moved away without telling the school they probably have friends who know what they are up to. In the rare event that someone falls of the radar screen and can not be tracked then they should be removed from the grand total of graduates.