I HAVE been amused and disturbed at some of the scrambled numbers crunched by some of your correspondents in the letters column particularly about Brexit.

Statistics, if used correctly, can be a very useful tool in most aspects of business, I used them mostly in my career as a manager in engineering – specialising in quality and improvement – but we could only use statistics if they had the correct base information upon which to present a meaningful result.

Some funny misuse of statistics could be such as you can appear to make going to bed sound dangerous by stating that it is more dangerous than parachute jumping, because more people die in their sleep than parachute jumping.

This is obviously a misuse of statistics because more people use beds than parachute jump but many of the so-called statistics I have seen are just as ridiculous.

The other classic statistic that is used to demonstrate the need for meaningful base statistics is to state that the time written on a piece of paper is more accurate than the town hall clock because the town hall clock is always a few milliseconds out but twice a day the time on the piece of paper is exactly correct.

This again is a funny miss use of statistics, It is a shame that some of the statistics given in the Brexit debate are often as flawed as the joke statistics I have given.

I hope that this has clarified my opinion of some of the statistics quoted and given some amusement.

Cllr Allan Glass

Holbury & North Blackfield ward