Minutes a day n e w y o r k

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P R O V I D I N G   S U P P O R T
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7 8
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Statistics may seem like the most uncontestable kind of fact—after all, numbers are objective. But numbers can
be, and often are, manipulated in many ways, including being taken out of context. Alert readers will want to
see the source of your statistics to be sure the figures are unbiased. We’ll explore this issue further in Lesson 11.
An opinion is:
something believed to have happened
something believed to be true
something believed to exist
Facts are what we know; they are objective and therefore do not change from person to person. Opinions are what
we believe; they are subjective and debatable, and they often change from person to person. Because facts are objec-
tive, they’re particularly valuable as evidence in an essay, especially when your thesis is controversial.
Facts include statistics, definitions, recorded statements, and observations. For example, a writer is draft-
ing an essay assessing the flat tax from her outline (Lesson 6). Here is her thesis:
A flat tax would be good for the government and for citizens.
To support it, she could include the following facts:
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The IRS publishes 480 different tax forms.
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The IRB publishes 280 different tax forms to explain those 480 tax forms.
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The body of the tax law has 7.05 million words—ten times the number of words in the Bible.
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The cost of income tax compliance is over $1.3 billion a year (some sources estimate the cost as high as $2
billion).