---
title: When Does Statistics Become Meaningless?
date: '2007-12-28'
slug: when-does-statistics-become-meaningless
---

There are some scholars making research on "indices" this year, and a few of them are my teachers. The day before yesterday I saw there was a press conference about a development index of China, which triggered one of my old ideas on the function of statistics (analysis). I believe two conditions will make the work of statistics meaningless:

1. If we do nothing but just _rank_ our samples; i.e. which is the first, and which is the last...
2. If our conclusions are common sense; i.e. anybody can know our conclusions _without_ statistical analysis.

Unfortunately, what I read from the news seemed to satisfy these two conditions.

