"Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument"
About this Quote
A warning disguised as career advice: numbers are less a final verdict than a set of props, and the skilled operator can stage-manage them to applause. Marilyn vos Savant, who made a public life out of translating logic for mass audiences, lands the point with a sly reversal. Statistics are supposed to be the antidote to rhetoric; she treats them as rhetoric’s most versatile fuel.
The line works because it flatters and indicts the reader at once. “Be able to analyze” sounds like self-improvement, a TED-era injunction to get data-literate. Then she slips in the punch: those same statistics can “support or undercut almost any argument.” The subtext is that ignorance isn’t the only danger; competence without ethics is, too. In a culture that equates quantification with honesty, she’s reminding you that technique can be weaponized.
Context matters here: vos Savant rose to prominence through a popular column where readers brought puzzles, paradoxes, and everyday claims dressed up as math. She watched smart people misuse probability, confuse correlation with causation, and launder opinions through percentages. Her sentence captures that recurring pattern in one clean pivot: the power of statistics isn’t just that they reveal reality, but that they can be arranged to narrate it.
The intent, then, is pragmatic skepticism. Learn the tools so you can see the seams: sampling choices, framing, omitted denominators, convenient baselines. Not to become a better bullshitter, but to stop being an easy mark in an age where arguments arrive pre-certified with charts.
The line works because it flatters and indicts the reader at once. “Be able to analyze” sounds like self-improvement, a TED-era injunction to get data-literate. Then she slips in the punch: those same statistics can “support or undercut almost any argument.” The subtext is that ignorance isn’t the only danger; competence without ethics is, too. In a culture that equates quantification with honesty, she’s reminding you that technique can be weaponized.
Context matters here: vos Savant rose to prominence through a popular column where readers brought puzzles, paradoxes, and everyday claims dressed up as math. She watched smart people misuse probability, confuse correlation with causation, and launder opinions through percentages. Her sentence captures that recurring pattern in one clean pivot: the power of statistics isn’t just that they reveal reality, but that they can be arranged to narrate it.
The intent, then, is pragmatic skepticism. Learn the tools so you can see the seams: sampling choices, framing, omitted denominators, convenient baselines. Not to become a better bullshitter, but to stop being an easy mark in an age where arguments arrive pre-certified with charts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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