They’re tools.
Statistics without direction and velocity are useless. They’re a bag of balls, or a rack of bats, blunt as a hockey puck or flabby as an under-inflated football. Pick your own silly analogy, but remember this: having them is pointless if you don’t know how to use them.
We all handle them differently.
Among the many approaches for handling statistics, you’ll find one that makes you comfortable, but some essentials are common to all good writers: they face forward, adopt a comfortable stance, stare down the opposition, deliver with confidence, and know how to use spin.
My number is a good number.
Readers need to be told how your number compares to the range of possible numbers. The statistic by itself means nothing until you place it into context.
- A full 50%
- As high as 50%
- Has improved to 50%
- Proud to announce we have achieved 50%
- At 50%, the perfect balance
My number is a bad number.
Except for experts in the field of your endeavor, your readers are at your mercy to interpret the value of the numbers you share. They count on you to guide them to an understanding of the importance of the evidence you present.
- A mere 50%
- As low as 50%
- Has sunk to 50%
- Regret to admit we have achieved only 50%
- At 50%, an awful compromise
Real-life example.
Michelle Obama on her book tour is talking frankly about infertility. The news announcer putting Obama’s miscarriage and subsequent worries into context shared these facts:
- Approximately 10% of American women between 18 and 45 who attempt to conceive, experience infertility to some degree.
- The percentage is higher for African-American women.
I have no idea whether those numbers are higher or lower than I should have expected, and the announcer was no help. She could have used the statistics in any of several ways to help me understand.
Find the useless sentence.
Though these sentences below are contradictory and entirely fictional, all but one serve a clear rhetorical purpose. MINOR IN-CLASS TASK: Find the useless sentence in the list below. Identify it by number in the Reply space, explain what’s wrong with it, and pledge to purge any sentences like it from your work.
- Modern medicine and Americans’ overall health have reduced the infertility rate to 10% for American women, though sadly the rate is higher for African-Americans.
- Shockingly, the 10% infertility rate for African-American women between 18 and 45 is higher than for women in many of the wealthiest African countries.
- The infertility rate has skyrocketed to 10% for all American women 18 to 45, even higher for African-Americans.
- 10% of American women between 18 and 45—more for African-Americans—who attempt to conceive, experience infertility to some degree.
- Though African-Americans lag behind by a few points, American women who wish to become pregnant have achieved a remarkable 90% fertility rate.
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
I’d say 2 is the most useless sentence presented. Adding the information about women in many of the wealthiest African countries doesn’t seem to have any relevance to what’s actually being discussed, and contributes nothing to the actual point of the statistic given.
#4 is the sentence without any clear rhetorical purpose. Each and every other example showcases a strong relationship to the statistic provided and how the writer feels about it. Meanwhile sentence 4 only provides a baseline statistic.
2.Shockingly, the infertility rate for African-American women between 18 and 45 is higher than for women in many of the wealthiest African countries.
The term “shockingly” implies an expectation that wealthier countries should have lower infertility rates
2. Shockingly, the infertility rate for African-American women between 18 and 45 is higher than for women in many of the wealthiest African countries.
This sentence is the useless one as it brings up an irrelevant point to the conversation. Each of the other sentences mention the infertility or the fertility rates in American women and points out that African-American women have higher rates while this sentence only mentions that African-American women have a higher infertility rate than women in wealthier African countries. There is no need to bring women from the wealthiest African countries into the conversation because they were never apart of the statistic to begin with.
Is this a game of spot the adjective?
1.) “sadly”
2.) “shockingly”
3.)”skyrocketed”
4.) blank as white bread
5.) “achieved a remarkable”
We can see here number 4 doesn’t put a spin aka an emotion or judgment or opinion into it. It reads like an academic paper.
I say purge sentence number 2 because the sentence doesn’t compare between woman to woman, but woman to countries. Not only that but the sentence doesn’t tells us how much or the percentage of the population. And the word wealthy doesn’t depict all of African American woman which basically means that the sentence only compares certain parts of countries, and not as a whole.
Number 4 should be eliminated it is just a generic statement no movement behind those word
The sentence that is the most useless is number 2. While it doesn’t include any statistics to prove the statement, it also talks about how African-American women between 18 and 45 is higher than for women in many of the wealthiest African countries. The statement of the women in many of the wealthiest African countries does not show any significance to the original claim.
The useless sentence would be sentence 5 because it gives no information about it really besides the fact that 90% get pregnant and it the first part gives no information or percentage.
I think 4 is the useless sentence. I think it is useless because it just gives a statistic, but it doesn’t seem so sure of itself, since it saying “some degree”. It isn’t exactly comparing itself to something, or putting itself in context. It just provides a statistic, without a rhetorical purpose. The other 4 includes a comparable relationship with compelling words.
Number 4 doesn’t really indicate whether the statistic is good or not.
Number 2 on the other hand doesn’t really make sense as Its comparing African American women to women from wealthy African countries, does this mean that the African American women dont come from these wealthy countries, making a genetic comparison? is it purely economical then? comparing the economy in wealthy African countries to the economy of America?
Sentence 5: serves no purpose as it restates the data as a 90 percent fertility rate of a 10 percent infertility rate without offering any context or importance . It also reduces the problem of infertility by highlighting the majority percentage.
Sentence 2: It serves the purpose of getting point across for African Americans, yet why does it include the fact of African nations? It makes no sense of why they’re including the wealthiest African countries when that information just doesn’t apply to the statistics that were presented.
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Sentence number 4 is a useless sentence. It provides no context to the reader about whether or not the statistic is positive or negative, and instead just lists the statistic. It does nothing except explicitly tell the reader what the statistic is; and even then, it lacks all of the necessary information to make a thoughtful argument.
Number 4 I believe to be the useless sentence. It is just putting the number there to read. It’s 10% infertility, a bit higher in African American women. But it doesn’t state the importance of either fact there. In fact, it doesn’t even state it’s concrete infertility. Just “infertility to some degree”, what degree? Is it possible for there to be degrees of it? What’s the range?
Sentence 4 is the useless one. There is no word describing an increase or decrease. Nothing telling us how sad it may or may not be. The sentence gives us nothing but the statistic and for that reason it is useless.
Sentence 4 is the useless sentence because it is the only one that does not give us any idea of how this statistic compares to prior infertility rates or how it compares to the rates in any other location. We do not have any necessary context or information to really understand what this statistic means. I pledge to purge any sentences like this from my work.
2
I would say sentence number 2 “Shockingly, the 10% infertility rate for African-American women between 18 and 45 is higher than for women in many of the wealthiest African countries.”
This sentence doesn’t have an explanation to the claim or argument it is trying to make. The use of the word “Shockingly” indicates they might have had an expectation that wealthier women would have a lower infertility rate comparing women to women but by “class” because of the use of word wealthy.
I say number 2 because it is comparing the percentage of one country to multiple other countries without saying the degree of difference between them. It says nothing about the poorer countries also.
I would say that number 4 is the most useless sentence because it doesn’t tell us how the statistics work. It simply just states the statistic with not back up information whereas the other sentences give us something to back up the statistics or to inform us in some kind of way of the statistics.
Sentence #4 is the most useless because it doesn’t give any sort of indication of what the statistic means in context or how the reader should feel about it. All of the other sentences have words like “reduced,” “sadly,” “shockingly,” “skyrocketed,” and “achieved a remarkable,” while sentence 4 gives us nothing to determine whether the statistic is good or bad.
I feel as though sentence number 4 is useless because it doesn’t specify on whether it is good or bad that 10% of American women experience infertility. Meanwhile, the other sentence include things such as “shockingly, skyrocketed, and etc.”