How Not To Make a Statistic (or The Downfall of Boston.com)  ⚐

I love Boston Cream Pie. So when I saw an article on Boston.com talking about how Bostonians don’t like Boston Cream Pie, I was intrigued. I bit the link bait.

Massachusetts’ favorite pie is pumpkin, followed closely by apple, then pecan and blueberry, according to Facebook data. Boston crème pie came in dead last.

Well, I’ll be. Dead last. Except, in the next sentence …

Boston.com collected Facebook data on Nov. 20 that reflected 85,900 mentions or likes from Massachusetts residents expressing interest in these types of pies.

Folks are more than 30 times as interested in pumpkin pie (44,000) as they are in Boston crème pie (1,420).

Well, no shit. On a single day, a couple of weeks after Halloween and the week before Thanksgiving, from posters to Facebook, pumpkin pie got more mentions on Facebook. Surely that means it’s true year round. And is not, you know, indicative of the slice of time and audience.

There was a point in time when Boston.com was worth reading.