Brad DeLong posts a comment by economist Evan Soltas from this week's conference of economic bloggers.
Soltas bemoans the fact that politicians extol anecdotes, often untrue anecdotes, in preference to data. He is right, but there may be no way to fix the problem.
Humans seem favorably disposed to storytelling. In every sense of the word. Many, if not most, on the other hand, have difficulty getting their head around statistics. Even when the statistics are graphically displayed.
Not even Presidential Candidate Ross Perot succeeded in combining the two skills.
Unfortunately, skill with anecdote leads to bad policy.
As we used to say in the Pentagon: "figures don't lie, but liars figure." Even worse, if a problem can't be described by anecdote, it all too often isn't addressed at all.
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