Submit an Article to Carnival #66
The 66th Carnival of Personal Finance will be hosted on Monday by Free Money Finance. BlogCarnival provides a handy submission form. FMF will consider any entries received before this Sunday at 6:00 PM eastern time. When you submit an article, please choose your best or favorite article from the past week.
Carnival of Personal Finance #65
The latest Carnival of Personal Finance was posted this morning at No Credit Needed. About 40 submissions made it into the final cut this week. NCN, the host, categorized the posts for easy scanning.
Thanks to the participants who linked back to the Carnival, including StopBuyingCrap and Free the Drones.
Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by Free Money Finance. If you would like to participate, submit your article before Sunday, 6:00 PM ET.
Submit an Article to Carnival #65
The 65th Carnival of Personal Finance will be hosted on Monday by No Credit Needed. Use this submission form courtesy of BlogCarnival. The deadline is Sunday, so submit early and often… or just early.
Carnival of Personal Finance #64
To readers in the United States: I hope you made the most of your holiday weekend!
The latest Carnival of Personal Finance was posted this morning at Aridni. There are over 50 submissions this week! Try reading ten articles a day for the rest of the week, and take a break on Sunday.
Thanks to the participants who linked back to the Carnival, including Free the Drones, Frugal for Life, and In Cash Flow We Trust!
Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by No Credit Needed. If you would like to participate, submit your article before Sunday, 6:00 PM ET.
Writing Better Articles, Tip #2: Beware Misleading Statistics
Statistics can been used to persuade people to believe in an idea especially when the statistic is combined with fear. Yet, some statistics are misleading or exaggerated, even in leading publications. As bloggers, we should be careful in understanding what the statistic really means by asking the question, Why?
For example, a leading newspaper once reported that the average college undergraduate student loan has increased from $12,100 to $19,130, up nearly 58% in the past decade. However, 1/2 of the increase is related to basic inflation which is also reflected in higher starting salaries, which help to pay off the higher loans. So, the statistic is correct, yet misleading. The article could have said the average college loan has increased by 29%, after reflecting inflation, over the past decade. Yet, this may not have caught the readers’ attention (and fear) as much.
In addition, some statistics relating to cause and effect can be due to a coincidence or to a weak/strong correlation. For example, we can find (and quote) a statistic that poverty is tied to poor academic achievement. So, a reader may think that money will solve the achievement problem. For this example only, let’s assume that the modeling of parents’ behaviors are really the primary factor that leads to both poverty and to their children’s poor academic achievement.
Thus, the coincidence between poverty and poor education achievement would mislead the reader when the attention should be on behavior. As bloggers, we should ask why is the statistic the way it is, in order to uncover the real issue. This way our readers can address the real issues instead of focusing their energy on coincidences.
Pete blogs at My Financial Awareness and has worked for over 15 years as an actuary.
Submit an Article to Carnival #64
The 64th Carnival of Personal Finance will be hosted on Tuesday by Aridni. Use this submission form to get your article in before the Sunday deadline.