Justification Maths

Statistics are often used in a bias manner to help promote a certain product. A company will of course want their product looking the best over their competitors. The simplest way to do this, is to manipulate data about the company’s product. The data may be manipulated but the data presented should still be true, not made up. In this brochure concerning a local cookie business, Beerwah Low Fat Choc Chip Cookie the data manipulated is the crispness, sales and flavour.

The so called “Low Fat “is not at all what it is made out to be, the author of this brochure has manipulated the data extremely effectively. If the entire graph and not just the pieces making the cookie look superior to the other business ‘the consumers would soon realise the cookie is not the cookie with lots of flavour. So the Beerwah Low Fat Choc Chip Cookie Company has manipulated data effectively to show the advantages of the business ‘cookie.

The histogram concerning the sales rating of the Beerwah Low Fat Choc is leading the audience to believe that Beerwah’s Low Fat Choc Chip Cookie was rated as having more sales then the Caloundra Choc Chip Cookie. Although what the consumers may not have known is that Caloundra’s cookie was actually rated higher in the sales category but to make Beerwah’s cookie look far better, the entire graph was not shown. On the brochure the consumer is lead to believe that it starts with 60- 69 sales and going all the way up to 90-99. In actual fact the graph starts from 20-29 going up to 90-99 but Caloundra’s cookie tested higher in those categories.

The second example of the Beerwah Cookie Company misleading the company’s consumers is the stem and leaf plot referring to the crispness of the cookie. Once again, only part of the graph was shown in the “Beerwah VS Caloundra “graph. The cookie’s crispness rating began at 90 on brochure but in actual fact the graph started at 60. If the entire plot was shown, Beerwah Low Fat Choc Chip Cookie would suffer a massive disadvantage with the businesses cookie not being as crisp as Caloundra’s. The deliberate leaving out of the rest of the stem and leave plot has made Caloundra’s cookie far more distasteful then in actual fact it is.

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