• Statistics can be used to distort understanding. To accentuate the positive, for example, one might use data to make a claim without providing the full context. A province might boast "the lowest unemployment rate in Canada" for instance. Beneath that favourable claim is a larger context that may or may not be revealed in a footnote: Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey does not collect data on First Nations reserves.

a. How might this fact about the data sample distort conclusions about the unemployment rate within a province or across different jurisdictions?

b. What impact might this distortion have on policy outcomes?

c. How might this distortion be resolved?