Trustworthy statistics are accurate, meaningful and relevant

The public's fascination with numbers, even when they don't understand the context, opens the door to pedlars of statistical information that is unreliable (at best) or deceptive (at worst).It is important to know what questions to ask in order to recognise untrustworthy statistics. The challenges in obtaining trustworthy statistical data are illustrated in three measurement contexts: the concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere, the national unemployment rate, and the white cell count in human blood.