While I've heard that government statistics can be far from accurate, I've never really given it much thought if I could rely on that information or not. If it was a lie, how would I know it was a lie? How would I figure out the truth? It would be far easier to just assume that any government statistic is true. After all, I trust numbers. Those don't lie to me.
But when I run across an example where government officials just purely mess up to the point where it can't be hidden, then I realize that if I can't verify it, I just can't trust it.
A few weeks ago, I was curious about the population of Atlanta. Most people would say the population was 5 million people but that would include all the metro areas. The city itself only has a population of about 500,000 people. But just to make sure, I did a quick google search.
The most recent statistics put the population at 472,000 (as of 2016). It didn't even break 500,000. However, the chart looked a little weird. In 1999, the population was 401,000 and steadily increased to 540,000 in 2009. In 2010, the population took a nose dive and hit 422,000 and started steadily increasing from there.
How did this happen? How did Atlanta lose over 100,000 people over the course of a year. I was still in college at the time and I didn't hear stories of people rushing out of the city.
As it turns out, the census was taken in 2010 and a lot of estimates since the previous census were drastically incorrect. The details are explained in an article from the AJC.
I used to think I could trust basic stats as simple as population but even something as basic as "how many people live in a certain area" can be a very complex thing to figure out.
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