The flexible power of statistics

Statistics can be used in intensely creative ways, especially in the business world. A CBC news report (on December 19, 2023) tells how this is visible in the automobile industry:

New Kia vehicles that have arrived from overseas are sitting on a storage lot in Wolverton, Ont., purposely locked up even though customers have been waiting months and months — some well over a year — to get their vehicles.

The new cars are being withheld from Kia’s Ontario dealerships — and reportedly from many more across the country — as part of a controversial plan by Kia Canada to game the number of sales in the last six weeks of the year….

He said there was concern that if sales continued to go well, headquarters would decide Canada didn’t need marketing support in the new year and would cut back on that…. An auto expert says it’s a very unusual move for Kia Canada. “It is normal for automakers to use creative strategies at the very end of the year… Usually, those strategies are to help increase sales, not reduce them,” he said.