Re:Scoundrel Statistics (Score 2, Funny)

My next concern would be precision. Using data with three or four significant digits (136, 1176) to make conclusions to seven significant digits (11.56463%) is silly, but that doesn't seem to have happened here. The only number in all of this that is fishy is the 16.3% number. To get three significant digits they'd have to know the number of lying households to that precision. If they had another study that determined this number they might very well have a number to that precision, but I'm assuming they just guessed.

It wasn't that precise. The original number was 17.0% and the article poster just converted it from metric percentages so Americans wouldn't get confused.