Manipulating Statistics Against the Gaming Industry

Our friends at the OLGn Network posted an interesting article concerning the ways statistics can be manipulated. Personally, I have always questioned the use of minimal statistics that supposedly prove a point. I often think we live in a society of numbers where common sense somehow goes out the window.

The most interesting point in their article follows:

I will tell you that if you do your home work, there is NO WAY you can make me believe video games make kids violent. If you look at the U.S. Governments numbers for people ages 12 plus here [LINK] and [LINK] . They say it right on the site “Violent crime rates declined for both males and females since 1994.“.

What is interesting about that statistic is gaming really started to boom after 1994.  Guys like the infamous JT spew out random statistics all the time, but as I have mentioned before they also avoid any statistics that could potentially damage their argument. He talks about scientific data. What a joke. Fortunately, one day these special interest guys will move on to something else. Someone on Digg commented on “Violence Causes Games” and mentioned that it’s a little known fact that the Vietnam War was caused by CandyLand, and sadly I am sure someone could dig up some random statistic to prove that as well.