Did you know that 7 out of 8 people have a teen skin?


That 91% of Minecraft players prefer survival over creative?


Or even that over 11.2 million Minecraft players are under the age of 12?


What, you didn’t know any of these? For shame, hopefully you’ll at least know this fact:

100% of these ‘facts’ are untrue!

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Good day, and welcome to another blog.

Today I am going to be talking about statistics. Yep, plain and simple. Good ol’, boring statistics. Did you know that 87% of statistics used in blogs are made up? Probably not, as that one was made up too. Looks pretty professional though. We see it all the time in the media, one little statistic can quickly make clear a point that would otherwise take a lot of umm-ing and ahh-ing to present.

That one number is a lot more professional and concise than the sentence that would otherwise be required to convey the point.

However, there is a problem. What happens when you’re writing your amazing blog on why they should add fudge to Minecraft before that accursed moderator steals your idea and you don’t have any stats to put in your blog? You don’t have time to do research, that mod is probably scheming about how best to nick your idea now!

The answer for some is simple, you make it up.

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Yep, you make it up. Who’s going to prove you wrong? Who’s going to say “actually only 303 people in 1000 claim to have seen Herobrine, not 404”? Writing a blog for PMC isn’t like writing for the national newspaper. No-one’s going to come after you with pitchforks and flaming torches for exaggerating the truth a bit.

But there’s exaggerating and exaggerating isn’t there?

Usually there is nothing better for engaging your readers than a shocking statistic. Did you know that 100% of you have read this far into the blog already? However, sometimes a statistic can be shocking in a different way… By how unrealistic it is.

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Take this for example: “36% of people admit to playing cracked Minecraft before buying the game.”

36% may not seem like a lot. But that means that if you asked five people the question then the statistics would suggest that at least one, if not two of them would have played cracked Minecraft at some point. 2 out of 5 sounds like a lot more than 36%.

However, there are lots of very long and boring books out there on statistics that you can read if you’re into that sort of thing. To spare any more of my ramblings, I’ll return to the crux of the problem.

36% would be a reasonable statistic for this statement. It’s large enough to leave an impact but not so large that people are laughing at the absurdity of it. This is where exaggeration can work in your favour. The actual figure for people who’ve played cracked MC is likely much lower, but over 16.3 million people have bought Minecraft so anyone who hasn’t played cracked would assume that they were just part of the 10.9 million that the statistic didn’t cover.

However, can you imagine what the reaction would be if the statistic was “89% admit to playing cracked Minecraft before buying the game”?

An endless tirade of “Pfft, yeah right. Nowhere near that many people play cracked, you mustn’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

A statistic such as this just cannot be believed by any stretch of the imagination. And worse, it breaks the flow of the blog and detracts value from your point. If a figure is outrageous enough then I am not exaggerating when I say that people will actually stop just to laugh at the inaccuracy of it.

“99.9% of forum posts are trolling.” – Please stop, you’re killing me…

You could have the best blog in the world, a good and plausible statistic could help it along, a ridiculous and implausible statistic could cause it to crash and burn.

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TL;DR

At the end of the day, you need to be careful with statistics. Did you know that 42% of people claim that Minecraft is the meaning of life? Me neither. But whilst a good and reasonable statistic can leave an impact and further your point, a poor and thoughtless statistic can be the death of a blog.

Basically, if you’re going to make up statistics remember this: it’s common for people to exaggerate, just don’t take it too far.

Thanks for reading and as always feedback is appreciated.

- Torm