{"id":12856,"date":"2022-09-27T17:38:55","date_gmt":"2022-09-27T17:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=12856"},"modified":"2023-03-30T03:20:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T03:20:53","slug":"media-bad-reporting-with-numbers-the-fastest-growing-cities-face-some-of-the-biggest-climate-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2022\/09\/27\/media-bad-reporting-with-numbers-the-fastest-growing-cities-face-some-of-the-biggest-climate-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Media: Bad reporting with numbers &#8211; &#8220;The fastest-growing cities face some of the biggest climate risks&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can you spot the problem?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2022\/09\/27\/cities-heat-population\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/1664200341447.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2022\/09\/27\/cities-heat-population\">The fastest-growing cities face some of the biggest climate risks<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The article never gives a number, only percentages.<\/p>\n<p>Without the initial, starting value &#8211; a percentage increase or decrease tells us nothing.<\/p>\n<p>For example, suppose city C saw an increase of +100%. That&#8217;s a big scary percentage. But what if we then learned that this went from 1 day to 2 days (which is +100%)? Would your gut level reaction of an increase from 1 to 2 be the same as your reaction to an increase of +100%?<\/p>\n<p>Our eyes and brain respond quickly to the large percent increases &#8211; they are, in fact, &#8220;eye catching&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Second, was there any change on the other end of the range &#8211; that is, were there more temperatures less than 5% of the historic low temperatures? Doesn&#8217;t say.<\/p>\n<p>Third, did the reporters attempt to check data quality? They don&#8217;t say. One simple check would be that when they find a +700% increase, was there a similar increase at other nearby reporting stations? If not, then that would suggest other factors are at work. But they tell us nothing.<\/p>\n<p>By the end of this short &#8220;news report&#8221;, we learn that reporters are not good at dealing with numerical data and conveying accurate information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Axios news report makes the classic reporter error &#8211; providing percentage increases without every providing a starting value. Does a scary +100% mean something increased from 1 to 2? We have no way of knowing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,29,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-communications","category-media","category-media-propaganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}