I read the San Jose Mercury News article titled "Bay Area homes' price down 1.4% from a year ago" and pictured yet another heated discussion between the two propaganda crowds.

You know, the ones who blindly say the sky is or isn't falling and the others who always carry around steel-reinforced umbrellas, not for protecting others, but to whack other people over the head with after they say, "I told you so." 

Clearly there's some middle ground.

Data is open to interpretation, and just like you can turn Mary Poppins into a horror movie or The Ring into a love story, with a little music and some sound effects, you can move from lies, to damn lies, to statistics in just the same amount of time.  So the key is to be able to think for yourself and make decisions that are based on your own requirements and risk tolerance.

This article isn't about whether or not the interpretation of the data is right.  (The folks at Square Feet who focus on Silicon Valley have their own positive interpretation on their sister publication's article and, in general, the folks at View from Silicon Valley take more cynical viewpoints.) 

This article is about some of the basics of how people use statistics and is based on an interpretation of the book "How to Lie with Statistics" written by Darrell Huff.  The interpretation was written by the folks in the physics department at SMU.

Continue Reading Lies, Damn Lies, and Mary Poppins? at the Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog.