Perception and Truth

On the New Year's retreat, the Buddhists discussed the relationship between perception, appearances and reality. How real is real? And so on. How does this impact on everyday life and statistics? We've all heard the "lies, lies and statistics" phrase, but how exactly can our perceptions, or apparently objective data be skewed in that way? Below is a great presentation by Alex Lundry on politics and data visualisation linked from information aesthetics.