00:00What's going on, everybody?
00:01Welcome back to another video.
00:02In this series, I show you how easy it is
00:04to manipulate and lie with data.
00:12Now, I don't know about you,
00:13but I don't really trust the news anymore.
00:15When they show me graphs and charts,
00:16I'm like, I gotta see the data.
00:18And so in this video, I'm gonna show you how easy it is
00:20to manipulate percentage of change
00:22when you're omitting something like the baseline.
00:24So let's jump onto my screen and take a look.
00:26So let's take a look at this data.
00:29Now, all we're looking at is the increased percentage
00:32in sales for different products.
00:35We have iPhone 14, Galaxy, PlayStation,
00:38Tesla Model 3, Nike Air Max.
00:40These are just different products out in the world.
00:42Now, we can very visually see that this Tesla Model 3
00:46had a very large increase percentage-wise.
00:50And what this leads us to believe by just looking at this
00:53is that Tesla Model 3 are just absolutely killing it
00:57in their sales.
00:58But we're looking at percentages,
01:01which can be very misleading in and of itself,
01:04but we're also omitting some of the baseline data.
01:07How many Tesla Model 3s were actually sold
01:10to increase by 150%?
01:13Were we just selling, you know, five,
01:15and 150% increase is now we're selling 12?
01:19Well, that's not really impressive.
01:20Or maybe we're selling 20% more iPhone 14s,
01:23but now we're selling, you know, 100,000 more
01:26than we were the previous year.
01:27And that's a really big increase from the baseline numbers.
01:31And so this right here can be very, very, very misleading.
01:34Let's take a look at the good omitted baseline.
01:37This is where we actually include the baseline numbers.
01:39Right now, this is bad.
01:41We don't want that.
01:42Let's include our baseline numbers.
01:44Now, let's come over here and we have our sales before
01:46and our sales after.
01:49Now, let's come over here and take a look at this chart.
01:52And I'm going to zoom in for just a little bit.
01:55Now, this is a bar graph.
01:57We are showing the data in a similar way, right?
02:00We still have a bar graph,
02:01but now we have three different things and we have a legend.
02:04This is still our increased percentage.
02:05So the blue is still representative exactly how it was in the battle.
02:09But now we have our sales before and after.
02:11And if you'll notice, this one right here, Tesla Model 3,
02:14this had the largest percent increase,
02:16but we have little tiny numbers right here.
02:19That's because our sales before, which is right over here,
02:22was only 20 for a Tesla Model 3.
02:25Afterwards, now we're selling 50.
02:27Hey, that's great, right?
02:29That's a fantastic thing.
02:31But it's not as impressive as if they were saying,
02:33maybe they were selling 200.
02:35And then when they were selling 500,
02:38that would be much more impressive.
02:40We'd be like, whoa, we have a huge increase in actual numeric value,
02:45not just percentage increase.
02:48And so if we change that back, it's not as impressive.
02:51What's actually probably the most impressive is this Nike Air Max right over here.
02:55Just by volume, we have a much larger amount here.
02:59Now, with this being said, you can still go even further in this.
03:04We could do a cost breakdown of how much actually costs to create the Tesla Model 3 versus what
03:10they sell it for, for the Nike Air Max, et cetera, et cetera, and do a cost analysis breakdown.
03:15You can dive into this.
03:17But in its core, if we really just look at this, when you do something like a percentage increase,
03:23and you omit those baseline numbers, it is very easy to be misleading about, you know,
03:28what's actually happening with the underlying data.
03:31Because right here, it makes it look like iPhone 14s, they're not doing so hot.
03:35It only did a 20% increase.
03:36And Tesla Model 3s are killing it.
03:38But then when we look at the data, it looks like iPhone 14s actually have a pretty large increase,
03:43because the 20% increase is on an already large number.
03:47When you're working with super small numbers, 150% increase isn't that impressive, right?
03:52If we only had, let's say, for example, two and five.
03:55Selling two to five at 150% increase is not impressive at all.
04:00And so percentages and these baseline numbers are extremely, extremely important to make
04:06sure that you're representing your data accurately.
04:08This again, and I said this in the last one, and I hate to dog on the news.
04:11No, I don't.
04:12But I see this in the news all the time.
04:15When they start doing percentage increases, I'm like, wait a second.
04:19What was it before?
04:20And what was it after?
04:21Give me the baseline numbers.
04:23Because if I don't have those baseline numbers, percentages are very easy to manipulate and
04:28make someone think something that's not actually happening.
04:30So if I say, wow, Tesla Model 3 had an amazing year.
04:33They had 150% increase.
04:35That sounds fantastic.
04:36But if the numbers are 20 to 50, that's not very good.
04:40And so understanding those baseline numbers, knowing how to represent them and show them
04:45in a chart or a graph is very important.
04:47And a lot of people online mess this up all the time.
04:51They just look at the percentage change.
04:52They don't show the baseline numbers.
04:54And it drives me crazy every single time.
04:56So I hope that this was helpful so that you don't make this same mistake when representing
05:00your data.
05:01If you like this video, be sure to like and subscribe.
05:03And I will see you in the next one.
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