Aside from claims that uses emotions, reasoning, fallacies, and general claims, there are also forms of misleading claims dealing with numbers. When we look at advertisements or claims that we see within a statistical arena, those numbers that are used, is used to form a claim. One has to be cautious about claims that comes with numbers or graphs, because sometimes they are not accurate. Just because a claims comes with percentage or numbers of statistical observation, does not make the claim true or a matter of fact. One still has to be very careful in acknowledging these claims with numbers and be able to try to differentiate to see if it is misleading type of claim or not. Here are some types of misleading claims such as two times zero is still zero claim, percentage claims, graph claims, and claims that compare apples and oranges. Claims that compare percentiles or numbers in an apple and orange method, is very misleading. It is not comparing items/situations of similarity, but two entirely different ones.
For example, my mom would sometimes get very upset and disappointed with my brother's and sisters from time to time. When she does, she would say, "even a dog can understand that, i don't know why you can't!" Harsh, I know. But in this comparison, you can see that my mother is comparing apples and oranges, since a human and a dog are two different things.
Another example, and example with apple and oranges and misleading numbers - Sometimes when I am talking to my friends, regarding subjects in life and community, we sometimes run into this problem. There was one time, we had talked about drugs and the changes it cause within our community. My friend had said...."There are twice as many people using ecstasy as there are those who are smoking cigarettes."
I wrote about apples and oranges too! I liked your argument about, "There are twice as many people using ecstasy as there are those who are smoking cigarettes." It is kind of like, how could you possibly know that? And even so, they are both pretty horrible to your body and a prevalent problem in society. At least with ecstasy you cannot spread it like second hand smoke to other people. It is not a very good argument because first, there is no possible way anyone could prove that, and second, how are those numbers even related to each other?
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