Lesson 6 · A Statistic without Its Denominator

A poster claimed that “half of students prefer online meetings.” The number seemed powerful, and our newspaper nearly repeated it. Before printing, we asked who had answered the survey. Only forty students had, all from a club that already held most meetings online.

The figure was not false: twenty of those forty preferred the format. It was misleading if readers imagined half of the entire school. We interviewed students in other clubs and found different needs. Some appreciated travel time saved; others found online discussion difficult when they shared a room with family.

We changed our headline to name the group and the number of replies. We also asked the student council to run a wider survey before deciding next year's meeting rules. That request would take more time, but it matched the size of the decision.

A percentage answers a question only after we know “of whom?” The missing denominator had been invisible in the poster, yet it changed the meaning of every word around the number.