Statistics, Fabricated or Fact?

The ACT. It should stand for Actually Controls my Total life, because lately, as junior in High School, the main thing it seems everyone wants me to think about lately has been the ACT. I know it may seem a little early, but nowadays everyone's trying to get a jump start on things, and my mom is no exception. I am taking my second ACT next weekend and this weekend she has been all up in my grill about doing my practice. But in reality, it is all down to one number. Your a 26, 27, 30... and all it translates to is a statistic. If you score a 30, perhaps you are in the 90th percentile, meaning you did better than 90 percent of the other students who took the test on that date with you. But what does that number even mean? It is all relative. For example, you could have happened to take the test on one date where all the dumbest students in the country took it at the same time as you so you scored a 36 or the 99th percentile, where if you took it maybe 3 weeks earlier you scored a 25 because you took it with all the Harvard wannabes.

Statistics turn an entire population into one number. You could be that hated but desired 1% of America, but why does that have to define you? 

Statistics can also be an unfair or misleading representation of a population. For example, of all the enslaved persons that crossed the horrible middle passage during the era of slavery it is said that around 10-15% of those enslaved persons died during their many week long journey. Some may look at that number and think that compared to 100%, those are decently good odds, but when you actually calculate out of the 6 million enslaved persons who crossed the middle passage yearly (Source), 900,000 of them would perish. 

There's a joke that "75% of statistics are a lie," get it? That's a statistic...

It's scary that in our day and age people allow statistics to carry an enormous amount of weight and truth. They let percentages define how they think of certain populations, but no one ever considers the possibility that the number, even though it may appear in print and be supported by research, may not be telling the whole story.