Lying with Statistics

… Mr. Bush said Mr. Kerry had been rated “the most liberal member of the United States Senate.”

“And he chose a fellow lawyer who is the fourth-most liberal member of the United States Senate,” Mr. Bush went on. …

   — New York Times

Piffle!

This illustration shows one dot for each senator in the current Senate. The blue dots are democrats, the red dots are republicans. There is one green dot toward the left for the one independent senator. The dots are sorted left to right to illustrate their ranking liberal to conservative. The data is from the gold standard in such ranking.

Senate108.png

Edwards score on this chart is 19.5; Kerry’s is 24.5; and Bush isn’t a lawyer only because the University of Texas declined to admit him.

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