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Politicians take advantage of this every single day: One side tells you every major social group is struggling. The economy is not working for them. The other side tells you that's not true. Look at the data! The economy hasn't been this good! What's fascinating to me is that both sides use the same data to argue opposite points. They might not be lying. Look at the attached image. The trend on individual slices of the data is negative but reverses when you look at the overall trend. This is the Simpson's Paradox. It's one of the ways people manipulate data to support any story they want. For those who deal with data, it's a reminder of how easy it is to arrive at the wrong conclusions. Trust the data, but verify it first.