Graphs Can Lie - Simple ways you're being manipulated

This morning I saw the following post on Twitter:

It looks like the US is really giving the UN waaaaaay more money than the other countries, right? And in truth, it is. 22% is obviously bigger than Germany's 6.3%.

But we need to stop and think about percentages for a minute. If I say I'll give you half of the money in my pocket, the amount you get is really dependent on how much money I have in my pocket. It also has a much larger effect on me given how much money I have in the bank when I say this.

For example, I have $100 in my pocket. I give you half and you now have $50. Sweet! But what if I had just pulled ALL the remaining money out of my bank account and stuck it into my pocket? That's a huge loss for me.

Now imagine I have $1,000 in my pocket, and I give you half. I also happened to have $15,000 saved and sitting in my bank account.

In these two examples, you get less money in the first situation ($50) than in the second ($500), but I lost more money in the first situation (50% of my total worth vs. 3.33%).

This is an important concept with looking at percentage graphs flashed in front of you on TV.

Yes, the United States outpaces other countries in UN funding, but the US has waaaaayyy deeper pockets. If we look at the SAME numbers in a different context, we get a much different story.

Now let's look at the exact same numbers presented NOT as a percentage of the total UN budget, but as a percentage of gross domestic product GDP (in US dollars).

The United States gives 0.0036% of it's GDP to the UN.

What I'm trying to convey here is that although the US gives more money overall than other countries, it's not all that much based on what it has in the bank.

Now let's look at how much money the US gives per capita:

The US gives $2.05 GDP per capita to the UN

Here we see other countries are giving MORE in relation to their overall bank account and contributors than the US.

Want to know where the US is spending all that money, per person?

The US spends $1,865 GDP per capita on defense.

Now THESE are charts that Fox News can have and post as much as they want.

For all of those folks that care, this data was compiled in Excel (check out the sweet graphics) using data pulled directly off the UN 2015 contributions report and data from 2015 GDP reports on data.un.org.