Nowhere is the misleading use of statistics seen more clearly than in the overall star-rating of hospitals.
As with our children, where it is more revealing to supply a profile of different abilities than a single figure such as IQ 110.
This should have been the method adopted by the Government in describing hospitals: "Very good" for this; "average" for this; "poor" for this.
It would demand more of the assessors but a profile would tell us more than a simplistic "overall" summation with its resultant feelings of "success" and "failure".
Yet again, we see politicians using statistics as a drunken man uses a lamp-post - more for support than illumination.
-R G Jenkins, Hove
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