YouGov have produced a fun, popular new parlour game. You give the site the name of a celebrity, author, TV show, pet, activity, or anything; and it gives you a lot more information in return. Essentially: “other things that such a person typically does and likes”. So, the “favourite dishes” of people who read Ben Goldacre books are Vegetarian Thali, Gravlax (whatever that is), and Pork Gyoza. Fans of comedian Richard Herring report that their favourite TV show is Stewart Lee (insensitive, given the *bitter* rivalry). Newsnight profiled their viewers at the end of their show on Tuesday (self-absorbed and listen to New Order). It’s fun to play around with.

But these statistics have been misinterpreted, because they have been mis-presented by YouGov.



Thali, Gravlax (whatever that is) and Gyoza aren’t the favourite dishes of Ben Goldacre readers: they’re the dishes that most differentiate Ben Goldacre readers from everyone else, the ones that are peculiarly preferred by readers of Ben Goldacre. They are the dishes where the reported preferences of readers of Ben Goldacre are most unlike those of non-Ben-Goldacre-readers.

To make it clearer, here’s an example of what the data might look like:

Favourite food of…..

Ben Goldacre readers Everyone else

Chocolate 1. Chocolate Chips 2. Chips Ice Cream 3. Ice cream Thali 4. Burgers Burgers 5. Crisps Gravlax (wtf?) 6. Doughnuts Crisps 7. Sandwiches Gyoza 8. Bum juice. Doughnuts 9. Etc.

In this data your favourite foods – as a Ben Goldacre reader – are Chocolate, Chips, and Ice Cream, the same as any other sane person. (In fact, although it might sound soppy, one question this dataset could answer best is how similar we all are). But YouGov would say your favourite foods are Thali, Gravlax (

– whatever the hell that is – and Gyoza.

That’s kind of basically wrong.

I don’t know why this has annoyed me, but it really has.

[Update: YouGov have changed the wording on their site.]