📊 Lies, Damn Lies & Graphs: What Every Property Developer & Investor Needs to Know 💡 Graphs can lie — and they often do. Not by accident… but by design. In Daniel Levitin’s book “A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics,” he exposes how data can be manipulated through visual misrepresentation — making things look better… or worse… than they really are. Let’s talk about how that impacts us as property developers. 👇 🔍 Examples of Data Deception You Might Have Seen: 1️⃣ The Double Y-Axis Deception Makes unrelated data look magically aligned. Don’t fall for it. 2️⃣ Tim Cook’s iPhone Sales Graph (2013, The Verge/Vox) It looked like sales were skyrocketing. But it was a cumulative sales graph, which always goes up — even if new sales are slowing down. 3️⃣ Purdue Pharma & Oxycodone Sales (1990s) Sales reps used logarithmic graphs to exaggerate effectiveness to doctors. This helped fuel the opioid crisis, as dramatized in Dopesick (Hulu). A tragic example of misleading stats → devastating real-world impact. 📉 So what’s the lesson for us in property development? ✔️ Don’t just accept the data you’re given — interrogate it. ✔️ Watch for scale manipulation, cherry-picked stats, or missing context. ✔️ Dig into real cash flows, true ROI, holding costs, vacancy rates, and market comparables before making decisions. 💡 As Levitin says: “If you don’t know how to read a graph, you don’t know how to read the world.” And in property development — that ignorance can cost you 5–6 figures 💸 ✅ Key Takeaways for Developers & Investors: 🔹 Always ask: What scale is being used? 🔹 Is the timeline selective or misleading? 🔹 Are unrelated datasets being paired for emotional effect? 🔹 What’s not being shown? 📣 👉 Share this post with someone who’s learning how to invest or analyse data 🧠 Drop a comment: Have you ever seen a stat or graph that just felt... off? 📩 DM me to learn how we spot data manipulation in deals, and how you can protect your capital by investing smarter — with us or on your own. #DanielLevitin #FieldGuideToLies #GraphLies #PropertyInvesting #DataMatters #DueDiligence #RealEstateEducation #SmartInvesting #FinancialLiteracy #InvestorTips #KnowYourNumbers #Dopesick #PurduePharma #OxyContinCrisis #TimCook #AppleStats #CriticalThinking #LogScale #MisleadingData #LearnAndEarn #PropertyDeveloper #InvestSmarter #InformedDecisions #LinkedInLearning #ViralPost #LikeMindedInvestors #booktok

Posted by Lily Claudia HammarlundSim at 2025-05-06 05:44:51 UTC