Psychology Professor explains how Trump uses statistics to mislead
Recently, Trump has done something very good for America. He went to large companies, like Apple, and negotiated terms for them to operate their factories inside the US. This means lots of jobs and better tax returns for America. He also wanted to release all the documents in the JFK case, and he was unfortunately cheated into releasing only the documents ‘fit for the public’s viewing’. So please do not think that I am just anti-Trump for no reason. Apart from the elephant- and ivory debacle, he has done some other terrible things. At the time that I am writing this article, a psychology professor from Colorado University has released an article showing how Trump uses statistics and Twitter’s limited characters, to try and mislead the public.
Where did this all start? Well, Trump recently tweeted that 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism, were foreign born. This is a statistic taken from a report by the departments of justice and homeland security. So, what is wrong with this statement? Based on a fact? Let me put the professor’s paper in laymen’s terms.
This is a fallacious form of reasoning. You may well think that not giving visas to foreign born individuals may lower that statistic in the future, but 3 out of 4 individuals being convicted of terrorism, has nothing to do with the INVERSE figure, that is, how many terrorists are there in a group of foreign born Americans. The answer, is that less than 0.00001% of foreign born Americans become terrorists. In other words, banning all foreigners from America, will ban thousand of people who are good and will be good for the economy, and the risk of them turning into terrorists is less than 0.00001 %. The risk will merely be reduced with 0.0001%, the risk will not be reduced with 75%.
