How else do would you explain why so many people think:

25% of the British population are muslim?

50% of the benefits bill is spent on the unemployed?

etc

Personal experience? If people live in certain areas of B'ham, London, Bradford, etc they may well assume 25% of the population is Muslim as around home they see a higher percentage than that everyday.

"Benefits" as a word, suggests to most people unemployment-type assistance. The problem there is perhaps in the word.

Or the reporting of it.

As has been mentioned more than once, IDS has been caught out fiddling the figures on benefits, but most of the mainstream media, having reported the fiddled figures as true, have generally ignored anything beyond that.

I direct you back to my original point.

You can also see the difference between local and national beliefs in [url=http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/ipsos-mori-rss-kings-perils-of-perception-topline.pdfIpsos/Mori perils of Perception[/url pdf

If that's too much for you, [url=http://www.rssenews.org.uk/2013/07/rss-commission-new-research-into-public-perceptions-of-statistics/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss-commission-new-research-into-public-perceptions-of-statistics&utm_campaign=Autotweets&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterhere's a summary[/url

I read somewhere that Bradford has around 12% Asian. The perception is if you go to certain areas it seems like 90%, I have sites in Manningham and Undercliffe where the vast majority are Asian, but if you go to other areas of Bradford you see very few.

Statistics can be manipulated into whatever the manipulator wants.