Numerical Bias 13 - Trends in the Number of People Returning Driver's Licenses (Part 2)

First, I would appreciate it if you could take a look at the questions posed in Part 1.🙇

A certain television program was discussing the following:📺

Equating 'decrease' with 'slowdown',
in other words,
a 'downward trend'.

Drawing such a blunt conclusion about a trend can sometimes miss the essence,—keeping that in mind, is the evaluation accurate? That is the key point.☝

👇 ☟ The focus is here ☟ 👇

When looking at such 'trends in the rate of increase or decrease',it is not good to ignore changes in the [denominator].right?

This statistic focuses only on 'people who actually returned their licenses', but the number/scale of 'people who could return their licenses' changes every year. In other words, if a large number of people have already returned their licenses as a background/preliminary stage, the 'pie' itself shrinks, so the subsequent 'annual number of license returns' tends to decrease =it is natural for it to trend downward, and if that point is not considered, one will end up with a shallow evaluationthat simplistically claims it is 'slowing down'.
※The following year, the number of people newly reaching the 'age range where returning a license is considered desirable' is added to the denominator, but similarly, some elderly people also pass away.

What kind of examples of [numerical trends] similar to this case
come to mind?

◆ The number of railway stations in the country. The ratio of 'unmanned stations' to 'manned stations' with regular ticket gates. As for operational changes at individual stations,you would imagine the direction is only from 'manned' to 'unmanned', right?So, can you conclude that 'the proportion of unmanned stations will increase over time' due to depopulation and a decrease in users?

～Considering that there are cases of line closures...
Perhaps 'the disappearance of the station itself/the denominator (which were already unmanned stations)' is more frequent than 'becoming unmanned'.🤔 In that case, the aforementioned [ratio] will trend in the opposite direction.

◆ Does the'number of lost hairs'that you worry about in middle age really 'only increase'?

～Eventually, it will 'definitely' turn downward, right?😰
※Perhaps the trend in the 'number of gray hairs' is an example that 'holds out' longer.

I want to be careful not to end up focusing only on superficial numbers and loudly raising points that miss the essence.🚫

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