UPDATED WITH LINK.  My last post shows clearly what can happen when you blog in a hurry. Are there supporting statistics for such occurrences? Read this post first and then read the originally intended piece in my next post.
Numbers are intersting to look at. You can look at a table of figures either as useful data or just meaningless numbers. You can choose to find whatever you need in any given set of data. Inc.com reports reliably that forty percent of managers have fired an employee for theft and that seventy-five percent of teens want to start a business. What does it mean? Well, you could join teenagers to set up your own business right away, get your own teen to set one, feel more confident about your nagging decision to fire an errant employee, or stop stealing right away because your employer has also read this article.
So, we are agreed that statistics teach us a lot from the wide variety of inferences and interpretations possible. Remember the days before soccer became a global phenomenon? When ten games that produced a 1-0 result were compared, the only difference on the analysis sheet would be the scorer of the goal and the time, the names of the teams and the list of players. Now check it out: you can see today how many corner kicks were taken, how many offside cases were ruled on, percentage ball possession by each team, and other neat stuff.
Even financial investigators hone their craft in the money game by simply following the money flow from person to person or business to business. Modern business statistics are essential for control and improvement. This fact is obvious in the developed (G8) and advanced emerging (Israel) worlds. The rest of the planet needs to play the game of catch up better.
The proliferation of computers and their ubiquitous use is the most meaningful step in that direction presently. You and I know that only a computer can drive a car safely and still be able to crunch data about road conditions ahead. Hopefully the cheapening of the cost of these devices does not imply that they are being packed with dumbed down technology. Even then, a cheap retrofit mobile phone that meets minimum standards is better than none at all.

The following link gives some useful statistics on television violence and the movie DIE HARD (includes Bruce Willis's.....): http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~mellgass/television.html