How to lie with statistics

In fact, one of the professors who examined his Ph.D. thesis (of no more than 100 pages)told me that it was the best solution he had ever read to the problem my friend attempted to solve in his research.   So what troubled my friend today?“I received an assignment from Nigeria,” he said, “from the Presidency.”“Cool.  […]

In fact, one of the professors who examined his Ph.D. thesis (of no more than 100 pages)told me that it was the best solution he had ever read to the problem my friend attempted to solve in his research.   So what troubled my friend today?
“I received an assignment from Nigeria,” he said, “from the Presidency.”
“Cool.  What about it?” I asked.  He had been given a data analysis project, my friend told me, but he couldn’t proceed without more data.  However, when he requested for more data from Abuja, he was told to “do it like that.”  Do it like that!
Imagine you’re a tailor who has been assigned to sew a jacket for a giant with a measure of cloth that can accommodate only a tiny little baby.  What would you do?  I’ll assume that you are a reasonable tailor who would ask for more cloth.  Well, that’s what my friend did.  But he was told, “no no no, you reasonable tailor with a lot of common sense, we’ll give you no more cloth, that’s a lot of work.  Yet, our giant must have his jacket, so manage what you’ve been given.”  Now stretch your imagination even further, say, you “managed” the cloth.  How does the giant look in his new jacket?  Not pretty, that’s how.
Unfortunately for the consumers of statistics, unlike the case of the giant, if my friend had played along, he could have come up with a pretty result, to the untrained mind, believable result even.  And could have accompanied his analysis with eye-catching charts and tables.  But it would have all been a lie, a wicked lie.
Now let’s direct our attention back to the early hours of this week, when we were given the good news that our economy had overtaken that of South Africa, making Nigeria the largest economy in Africa. This was done after rebasing.  What is rebasing? Ha!  I asked the same thing.  I read statements from the minister of finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to see if she would explain the meaning, but I was unlucky; she repeated the word several times without telling us what it means.  Our analysts confused me further by analyzing the implications of our new status without first defining the term.  Then came Malam Sanusi Abubkar to the rescue.  Writing on the back page of Daily Trust on Tuesday this week, he said rebasing is a fancy way to say recalculating.  Recalculating.  Why wouldn’t they say so? 
Sometimes, it seems our newspapers are not only lazy, but are also deliberately withholding important information.  I read many reports on the topic from our local papers and none explained the term.  Compare that attitude with the foreign newspapers.  When I later read The Economist, it wrote recalculating in the second sentence of the report.  Bloomberg waited until the third paragraph but it gave the information nonetheless. 
But that’s not the point, the point is, God forbid, what if Bureau of Statistics lied?
The main reason why students are advised not to falsify research result is because of the far reaching consequences of such duplicity.  Such results could inform significant  policies and decisions.  In this case, everybody is already talking of our recalculation, The Economist stated that we’ve “joined the burgeoning club of middle-income countries.”  Bloomberg said our economy “ expanded by more than three-quarters to an estimated 80 trillion naira.”  Everybody is using the figure now, but what if it’s a lie?
It’s not as if the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has a squeaky clean image.  Recall what happened in early 2013 with the economic status of Sokoto state.  News media said Sokoto was the poorest state in Nigeria and claimed NBS as their data source;  prompting the governor of Sokoto state, Magartarda Wamako, stepping forth, breathing fire: “ An agency that failed to conduct a proper survey on what we have been doing as government to mop up the rate of unemployment in the state should not attempt to misinform Nigerians and the rest of the world that Sokoto is the poorest state in Nigeria with 81.2 per cent rate. Such a rating is unthinkable, utterly incorrect and misinforming,” the Punch newspaper reported him as saying on January 14. 
A week before, on January 6, it was the same Punch which reported that Sokoto was the poorest state in Nigeria: “ According to the information on states of the federation, posted on the bureau’s website, other states with over 70 per cent poverty rate include Katsina, 74.5 per cent; Adamawa, 74.2 per cent; Gombe, 74.2 per cent; Jigawa, 74.1 per cent; Plateau, 74.1 per cent; Ebonyi, 73.6 per cent; Bauchi, 73 per cent; Kebbi, 72 per cent and Zamfara, 70.8 per cent.” 
It took NBS almost three weeks to deny the reports that it rated Sokoto poorest. On 25 January, Thisday published a statement from the Dr. Yemi Kale, the statistician general, addressed to the chambers of Dr. Alex Iziyon (SAN), the lawyer to the Sokoto State Government probably because the state threatened law suit: “First to be noted is that, the Bureau conducts its National Poverty Index every five to six years. The last survey conducted was in the year 2009/10, whilst the previous one was conducted in the year 2003/04. It can be said therefore, based on this explanation given by the Bureau that the publications on poverty for 2012, so mentioned are out of context and false.”
It’s not that the new figures are incredible, indeed, due to our population alone, I believe we should have the largest economy in Africa.  But I don’t believe these new statistics (we may be smaller or even larger) because our agencies are lazy and none has demonstrated any competence which merits credibility.  Remember, my friend was ordered to cook up missing data from our presidency!