Assorted Afflatuses

A story on the BBC recently caught my attention, not because it revealed anything particularly alarming, but rather because it contained a strange analysis of statistics. The article, "One in 20 Latinos 'goes hungry,'" details the findings of a new report, released today by the National Council of La Raza. According to the article, the new report claims that one in every twenty Hispanics living in the United States regularly lacks food. The article goes on to comment that such a rate, "is substantially greater than that of non-Hispanic whites," citing a government statistic, which puts hunger rate of non-Hispanic whites at 5%.

That analysis makes absolutely no sense. If the National Council of La Raza claims that one in every twenty Hispanics is hungry, then it could be said that five in every hundred — or five percent of — Hispanics are, unfortunately, hungry. How remarkable: the same percentage of non-Hispanic whites and Hispanic whites are hungry, according to these two sources.

And this is why, my readers dear, statistics lie: dare not go near!