Using facts and figures to discredit yourself and your case

Our govt and elite pride themselves as no nonsense organisations and people, and they often used facts and figures and statistics to prove their case. This is obviously good and it was obvious in the past that facts and statistics were convincing. I said that was in the past when people were simpler and easy to persuade due to ignorance, low level of education, and unsophistication. Can people still use facts and statistics to prove their case? Sure, when the faith and trust of the people are there, the audience would believe in genuine data, not distorted data, selective data or fabricated data. They trust the person providing and using the data.

Today, everyone with a little education knows that statistics lied, facts also lied as they can be fabricated or twisted to give a false or distorted truth. Maybe some in govt and authority are wondering why people no longer believed in what they said, even with facts and statistics. They could be wondering why they were so clever to come out with their sets of statistics, but still could not convince the audience. The only thing I could think of is that they thought, yes, people nowadays can think, or started to think, that they are the only smart asses around but still think the people are daft.

Take the case of SGX presenting its slew of statistics after 1,200 remisiers signed a petition to Tharman. The SGX must have thought their data were flawless and convincing, and telling the truth. I am not going to question that, and I swear I did not read or hear the data being presented. I don’t even know who presented what. All I heard was a session of disbelief and head shaking of course.

The best answer to what the SGX statistics presented meant to the public is in Narayana Narayana’s letter to the Straits Times. And I produced the gist of the letter here.

The Forum Editor,
The Straits Times,
Singapore.

6th February 2015.

SGX's kneejerk response 'SGX cites rise in retail activity to rebut petition' (ST Money February 6 2015) is on a par with its
earlier equally defensive support of its change in the tradeable market-lot from 1000 previously to 100 units wef January
19 2015 ('Retail demand for 100-share lot encouraging' - ST Money - January 20 2015).

The assumption that 'the opening of '71,043. new CDP accounts in the past year, a 12 per cent rise' would somehow translate
into corresponding increase in trading activity defies logic. A friend who was offered preferential allotment in an IPO opened a
CDP account simply because he needed one to park/hold the shares. He has no intention, nor inclination, to trade at all.

It is telling that 'more than half of 1.7million CDP accounts have share investments' with the inevitable corollary that the rest 'less than half' do not. It would be educative to learn how many among the former have an investment other than SingTel shares allotted two decades back.



SGX asserts with a slew of statistics that 'the number of daily retail investors/transactions has skyrocketed (sic)...since 100-unit board lots were introduced...'). Sad to say, this optimism appears to be at odds with the 'Market Summary' published daily in the Straits Times. Admittedly, '2 billion shares worth $1.1 billion were traded' on January 21 (ST Jenuary 22 pg B11) but much of that gilt disappears when taking into consideration that 'Top Activitist' hogged the limelight with 616.4 million turnover - trading at '0.1 cent - On other days, trading has at best been desultory, and just yesterday (February 5) volume dipped below one billion, a benchmark of sorts….

What do you think? Should SGX be thinking that it has presented its case well and the matter shall be closed? Should Tharman or the MAS be satisfied that there is really no issue and there is nothing else to pursue? The Stock Market is in the pink of health!

What do you think the public, the investors, and the remisiers were thinking? Does the SGX believe that these people believe in the statistics presented? Should SGX, MAS and Tharman all agree that we should move on, the SGX has explained and that’s it?

The issue, if there is a problem, is the problem real? If the problem is real, you cannot just walk away after saying your piece. The problem will come back hounding you. And if one is presenting something that no one believes in, instead of convincing the audience, one is as good as discrediting oneself. There will be a lost of faith and trust.

Now I am wondering what would Tharman and the MAS be thinking? Would they be saying what Boon Wan said, that he thought the tender of the columbarium were in order and that he had to put the matter right? The number of people affected, and the votes going to be lost, would be more than the number of aggrieved potential buyers of Sengkang West in this case. 1,200 signed up and there are a few thousands more in support of the letter but chose not to sign for whatever reasons.

Where to go from here? Everything is fine?