Ok, I did consider giving this the heading: “Anyone who confuses correlation and causation will die!”

However, that would have mean that the joke was so clearly telegraphed that only Donald Rump supporters would have missed it…

Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot lately and I’ve come to the simple conclusion that Mark Twain was right…

Of course when I say that Mark Twain was right, I’m presuming that he actually said – or wrote – what’s been attributed to him:

“There are three types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.”

Then again, I’ve learned not to place too much store in what people assert when they write. For example, I read somewhere that Tom Hawkins was likely to kick 800 goals this season… which would be an impressive effort in any AFL season. However, I presume what they meant to say was that he’d kick his 800th goal this season…

Whether Tom does or doesn’t manage to achieve that impressive feat, I’d just like to suggest that there’s something wrong with the world when people who are being paid to produce intelligent commentary… or at the very least non-ambiguous sentences… come up with stuff like that!!

Yeah, all right, I’ve made the odd mistake myself, but that’s not the point as anyone who works for Sky News will tell you… We’re here to hold others to account and that means others so when it comes to our mistakes, how dare you?

Anyway, I have been concerned about how little people understand about correlation and causation and statistics generally. For example, when I point out that certain one of the clear indicators of academic success has to do with what postcodes students come from, so the simplest way of improving academic performance would be to change the postcodes of poorly performing students, there’s a real chance that some politicians will want me to take over as head of education…

Which brings me to the whole opinion poll thing!!

Now, it’s always hard to ignore polls but the one thing that polls should teach you is that they are about as reliable as trying to pick the result of a horse race or sporting contest by looking at who’s leading at the moment. I mean, sure, it’s better to be in the lead than so far back that we can wonder if you’re even there, but it’s no indicator that you’ll stay there.

Looking at the opinion polls over the past two years, I’d say that there are a number of things that should concern Labor. For a start, they’re regarded as just like the Liberals by a lot of lefty voters. Of course, that means that they’re regarded as just like Liberals by a lot of middle of the road voters and when I say that I mean that they’re like the Liberals only with a Budget surplus and a more competent front bench…

Having said that, I must say that nobody in the media seems to be pointing out that it’s rather unusual that a government hasn’t actually lost a poll in two party preferred terms this far into their term… Maybe there was one that I missed and, yes, there were a couple that had them 50/50 but the point remains.

Of course polls are one thing. In a sense they’re a bit like someone complaining about their partner. They may tell you that their partner is incredibly frustrating but it doesn’t mean that they’ll leave them anytime soon… What counts is when they start packing their bags and working out where they’ll stay… Reality is more important than what people say they’d like to do…

And when it comes to the reality, we need to look at actual elections:

• Labor won Aston. Almost unprecedented.
• Labor held Dunkley with a swing against them. Surely, surely given how bad they are, Dutton’s Duds should have picked at that one.
• The Tasmanian Liberals suffered a 12% swing against them on the primary vote.
• In South Australia, the Labor Government picked up a Liberal seat in a BY-ELECTION!

Yes, in the upcoming state elections, Labor will lose Queensland and the Liberals will pick up one of the biggest percentage increases in terms of seats held ever… They hold two so going to ten would be a 500% gain.

But in reality, the next election is slightly more likely to see Dutton as PM than Clive Palmer… but only slightly more likely!