Intentionally changing what the data actually show to
fit a claim furthering an agenda. Anytime someone ignores, suppresses, or alters findings, results, data or statistics to
fit their agenda. This could be media skewing a graph to
hype fear (
ex. of violent crime, drug use), politicians ignoring data needed to accurately assess a policy (
ex. Lead in the water), social scientists beefing up a study's results to be published, companies claiming a product is safe (
ex. Pharmaceutical clinical trials), and everyday users of Twitter who offer a "poll" to show what 'everyone' thinks.
The graph showing the increase in violent crime nationwide was obvious data gerrymandering because the statistics were only taken from the cities with populations over 1 million.
The Senator was gerrymandering data when he said that giving
ex-felons the right to vote would
mean all the convicted terrorists
will be able to cast a ballot.