Lies, damned lies and statistics

Doctors say that Nordberg has a 50/50 chance of living, though there’s only a 10 percent chance of that.

I was looking for something else and came across some quotes from Stalin. One of the most famous and chilling being “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic”. I’m sure there’s millions more think that Marilyn Manson is responsible for creatively arranging those words for his hit pop tune “The Fight Song”. That’s a worrying statistic on its own.

But elsewhere they sound like quotes from a Bond villain “Death solves all problems – no man, no problem”, or a poster slogan from the oft visted student billets of my youth “When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope”.
Context is everything I suppose.

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