#statistical manipulation

[crooked-wasteland]

You Can't Trust The Media

No, this terrible rendition of Lilo & Stitch is not a success (yet). While $341.7 Million dollars seems like a lot, what if I were to tell you the movie cost $200 million just to make and advertise? That means that the movie has only actually made Disney a measly $141 Million dollars. And since Disney is a massive company, those earnings are barely profits.

The press is trying to play on people's FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) with dark money from Disney. These articles are PR in the guise of news. It is actual propaganda.

To put it in context, the original Lilo & Stitch from 2002 cost $80 Million to make, and the movie earned $270Million in the global box office. This was considered a financial underperformer and "modest" return. That's over three times the budget for the film.

Of course we are unsure of the money spent on marketing as studios typically do not share that information, but we are aware that even the original film had an inflated marketing budget compared to other movies coming out at the same time as well. But a marketing campaign being the same price as the film itself is pretty unheard of and partly why Disney is boasting about the amount of money they are spending on this film.

But the fact that advertising costs are typically hidden should also raise some eyebrows. Why would Disney give a firm number for their advertising budget? It's reasonable to take that 1 Million as a rough estimate. It probably is a higher number.

I also want to mention it seems odd how quickly we are getting Global boxoffice numbers. It feels like they may be trying to beat the bad press coming out.

But at the end, this still isn't a runaway success. Even by Disney's own reported numbers, this isn't that impressive. But the media will try and tell you it is.

This is how propaganda works.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Ira Stoll

An encouraging development in the Israel-Hamas war is that the online pro-Israel press watchdogs finally seem to be getting the upper hand over the New York Times.

A few recent examples tell the story.

A New York Times Sunday opinion article by Megan Stack, headlined “Don’t Turn Away From the Charges of Genocide Against Israel,” was authoritatively debunked by Shany Mor in a thread on X that has attracted nearly a quarter-million views.

Mor faulted Stack’s piece for “rank dishonesty,” noting that it “truncated” the “legal definition of genocide,” omitting “a crucial part of the definition.” Mor also faults the Stack piece for misquoting Israelis to depict them, falsely, as having genocidal intent.

More concludes: “Rather than trawling the internet for truncated quotes, we might want to investigate why so many of our self-appointed humanitarians have spent decades fantasizing about the day when they could drag the Jews in before a tribunal to face the charge of being the real Nazis.”

A column by Nicholas Kristof that also ran in the Sunday New York Times got a similar online dragging, and deservedly so, from the X account of Salo Aizenberg. Aizenberg noticed that in a comparison between American bombing Iraq and Israel bombing Gaza, Kristof used a comparison that started in 2004 rather than 2003. “To push fake narrative one must misrepresent,” Aizenberg wrote, in a post that attracted more than 380,000 views. “If one seeks to compare US & Israel bombing numbers to draw conclusions one MUST begin with the start of each invasion. Anything else is grossly misleading.” Aizenberg described the Kristof column as “statistical manipulation and a “major misrepresentation.”

The Kristof column conceded, “The attack on Oct. 7 was particularly savage, and no doubt my perspective would be different if I had been on the receiving end.” No doubt!

[1968bullittmustang]

[2kinkycubangemini]

Drunkenly insisted he come over, changed his mind 5min from my apartment, ghosts me for a week. I lightheartedly called him out for not rescheduling getting drinks and catching up that he suggested, so he reschedules. He makes heavy handed moves on me all night until he fucks me. Immediately says it was a mistake and promptly leaves without looking at me until he says goodbye. 2 weeks and nothing has been said. He then texts me, no hey how are you, asking if I'd been tested. Was like pulling teeth getting out of him that he'd been experiencing symptoms and suspects trich. I was tested after we slept together last time and was good, but to ease his anxiety I say I'll get tested again. I send him my results 2 days later. He purposefully miscommunicates and says "I'm all good". I voice that while I appreciate him wanting to let me know, that it caused me anxiety and he could've just waited until he knew for sure. He says he misspoke and hasn't actually gotten his results back and assume all clear since we both were negative previously (huh?!). Almost a full week goes by and he finally gets his negative results and sends me only the trich results. I rightfully ask if he got the full panel or just a test for trich. He sends me all the results, but only bc I asked. I reiterate that he could've just waited for the results to tell me because it stressed me out.

He finally admits that someone he slept shortly before me (unclear when) tested positive and he wanted to be on the safe side. I'm not in the mood for a fight so I just said ok that makes more sense.

Like I'm so fucking tired. He's such a fucking manipulative liar with serious communication and emotional immaturity issues. I literally do not give a fuck that you sleep with other people, just don't fucking lie and manipulate me holy shit. And the audacity to get defensive when I neutrally tell you how this whole thing made me feel instead of being passive and soft about it, is fucking WILD. Like I just know he's painted me as the crazy girl in his head because I call him out on his hypocritical and manipulative bullshit even in a neutral way. Like if you had just been honest from the fucking start I wouldn't have to match your fuckass attitude omfg

[boycritter]

i always wonder what my friends are saying about me behind my back. i hope it’s nice.

[worstloki]

Thor is sad and it rains. Thor is happy and there’s a storm. Thor is embarrassed and there’s hail. He feels anything for long enough and it Induces Weather. Manufactured stoicism and a magic controlling hammer were necessary to learn.

[ao3statistics]

This is self-made. Date: 31.03.2024.

I assume no guarantee or liability for the completeness, correctness and accuracy of this chart despite my best efforts.

Includes fanfictions in all languages available on Ao3, NOT English only.

Character tags and ship tags were excluded but I made an exception for the "one-sided Tim Drake/Ra's al Ghul" tag because it's not flagged as a ship tag and many stories with Ra's creeping on Tim do actually have a different ship.

More charts will follow. :)

Want to have a chart for different pairings, headcanons etc. in your favourite fandom? Send me an ask!

[charles-leclerc-official]

hello luci, what account do you refer to when it comes to accurate race pace deltas, i've always thought they are very tricky to get right considering the number of factors that go into it...

on the same subject i thought this discourse was exclusively on twitter but it's common elsewhere as well, i don't know why people use the 0.1 tenth gap charles pulls on carlos as evidence of him not being that fast a driver compared to others who have pulled bigger gaps to their teammates, as if it discredits him maximizing the cars he has driven to the absolute limit. one can say carlos did a good job without discrediting charles. have they never considered the possibility that charles didn't pull a bigger gap simply because the car never permitted him to?

i feel like this is one of those situations where it's so easy to mislead with numbers and stats because anyone who has watched f1 over an extended period of time knows that charles is comfortably better even if the gap is "just" a tenth

With regards to the comparison between Charles and Carlos I'd need more specifics because I don't know the exact discourse that's going on surrounding that. If I know the context it would help if we are looking at a specific weekend or a year or their whole tenure as teammates. Although I don't really care since I think that the final results speak for themselves, and there is more to being a good driver than the gap to teammate. I think Charles' results overall make a compelling case.

Deltas are tricky because I feel like a lot of the time people are talking about different things when saying this. Are we talking over a single lap? Over a race? Did someone take out the laps that should be excluded to get a more accurate picture of pace etc. Which I found often lead to a lot of arguing on twitter because everyone was talking about something different.

I look at the raw data either from live timings or on F1 tempo and go from there based on what I want to know. I only look at pace when I think it's a relevant comparison to make. Sometimes the pace is not the main story of a split between two drivers. Really depends on the specifics.

And yes ultimately you are right. It is really hard to do an accurate statistical analysis of race pace deltas. Because pace is only one story in a race and between teammates. Obviously if one guy is battling for a position his pace won't look as good as his teammate who had clean air most of the race on paper, but it doesn't really make him worse, if that makes sense.

Delta comparison is helpful but it should not be treated as the end all when it comes to determining these sorts of things. There are some races where pace deltas just cannot be compared because drivers were on completely different tyre strats etc (Suzuka '24 good example for Ferrari)

The gap could be whatever but at the end of the day if one guy won/outqualified/finished higher more than the other consistently over the course of years that's far more informative*

I find when people really want to harp on specific stats in these driver vs driver arguments they usually just attach to the one that best supports their argument and ignore everything else. So I don't really think it's worth engaging if that's your concern.

*of course then you have to take special circumstances beyond a driver's control into account, not their fault if the car engine just dies on them etc. But I have corrected for this specifically with Charles vs Carlos h2h before and it pretty much remains unchanged with overall results. They both had roughly the same number of dnfs etc that were not their faults.

[devotedlystrangewizard]

i love going onto websites that arent tumblr and seeing people talk about getting all achievements thinking "ugh yeah the honor mode achievement must be a nightmare" only to get slapped in the face with the reminder that i (guy who willingly fucked the emperor) am an outlier who should not be counted

[thebeesareback]

I think probably the most annoying case of mansplaining i ever had was from my (now ex) boyfriend. My mother was a midwife,and I grew up surrounded by experts in childbirth, aftercare and pregnancy. This doesn't make me an expert, but I did hear a lot about all aspects when I was young and I picked up some information. I mentioned that homebirths are safer, unless it's a high risk pregnancy, because the person giving birth often feels calmer and there's less risk of infection with all of the superbugs you get in hospitals. I was born at home, as were my siblings, and most of the babies born to the midwives I know. He responded by telling me about a thing he read on Reddit which said that maternal mortality was higher outside of hospitals, and dismissed everything I'd said as "anecdotal evidence".

I later discussed this with my mother. The study he half-assedly cited had some very misleading information: they counted any births which happened outside of hospitals as "home births", including when someone had unexpectedly gone into labour and given birth in the car; births in ambulances; situations where paramedics had had to give advice over the phone to someone (usually the father) and get them to deliver the baby. If your homebirth is a low-risk pregnancy, and you have at least two fully qualified midwives with you, it is safer to have a baby at home.

Obviously, if you're the one up the duff, do what feels best for you. But don't let some unqualified man with an unwashed ass talk down to you because he's been on Reddit.

So yeah he can fuck off

[arolesbianism]

Thinking abt my salmonid ocs again... I need to design them soooo bad but at the same time I have yet to decide what to do with their clothes as while the traditional battle salmon pant would suffice my need to do needless extra work for the sake of worldbuilding is powerful indeed

[a-person-on-earth]

Dr. Omar Suleiman on X: "This is dehumanization in a nutshell. https://t.co/GW8FoSm95f" / X

[daniel-nerd]

I hate seeing people use statistic manipulations to prove whatever point they want to prove. these numbers means basically nothing without context, also the categories you choose and the time stamps are very important and can paint a whole different story.

most people, especially the ones who see and share posts on social media as “research” don’t know how to spot statistic manipulations, they also don’t know how to check the sources. these numbers could be made up and no one would know! especially when the people who post these type of posts don’t share their sources!!

please, tell me more about how the number Palestinians in gaza since 1948 has been increasing, while the number of Jewish people in arab states have been decreasing. don’t sweat about the nakba, or the multiple military operations to bring jews from these arab states to israel! or even about the fact that genocide is a long process that takes years and isn’t just *boom* a war! *boom* 6 million jews die!! all of these aren’t important for context! they’re just little fun facts that the average person doesn’t need to think about when seeing your post.

wanna see how i can also use numbers to prove the exact opposite point? according to makor rishon, since 1851 up until april of 2023 there were 4,255 civilians who died to terror attacks, according to standwithus there are over 1,200 civilians who died to terror attacks since october 7th. so let’s say around 5,555 civilians who died to terror attacks. according to reliefweb, over 11,000 civilians have died in gaza alone since october 7th!! that’s double!!! 2 PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS HAVE DIED IN THE PAST 45 DAYS FOR EVERY ISRAELI CIVILIAN THAT DIED IN THE PAST 170 YEARS

(both sources updated up to nov 19th)

“numbers don’t lie” is a way to shove propaganda up the average person’s ass

yes, numbers don’t lie. but this isn’t math class!! war and genocide is way more complex than what numbers can explain!! especially to the average person who doesn’t have a PhD in statistics!!

[thatsnotveryladylike]

finally decided on a 2025 resolution. borrow at least two books from the library every month

[gaybaseball-fan]

Ennui, Mon Ami!

[unicodehealthcareservices45]