BBC News is running a weekly ongoing series of articles that describe and illustrate common misconceptions (and manipulations) of statistics using examples from the news and ads.
Lesson 1: surveys. Lesson 2: counting. Lesson 3: percentage. Lesson 4: averages. Lesson 5: causation.
posted by Tehanu on Sep 3, 2008 - 46 comments

Roman Vassilenko, the press secretary for the Embassy of Kazakhstan, wants to clear up few misconceptions about his country. Women are not kept in cages. The national sport is not shooting a dog and then having a party. You cannot earn a living being a Gypsy catcher Wine is not made from fermented horse urine.
This is a response to Borat, a character from "Da Ali G Show." Previously discussed here, and here.
posted by garethspor on Sep 15, 2004 - 15 comments

MisconceptionFilter: Apparently, you can't see the Great Wall while orbiting the earth, according to Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut.
posted by antifreez_ on Mar 12, 2004 - 16 comments

This is not a medieval woodcut! Though it appears everywhere, this particular woodcut has been repeatedly mis-identified and used most often to support the idea that the medieval world thought the earth was flat, an idea whose inception can be traced to this man, a fiction writer who not only wrote this but also this.
posted by vacapinta on Jun 9, 2002 - 8 comments