Jonathan Goodman:

It is open to question, however, whether flights operating on a buffered schedule arrive ‘on time’ in the sense that ordinary people use the term. If a flight is scheduled for 2.5 hours and takes, on average, only 1.5 hours to reach its destination, then is any flight that arrives at its scheduled time really on time? Or have the airlines merely redefined the term ‘on time’ to generate more favourable statistics?

I often tell people that statistics are not to be trusted. Then a statistician gets really mad, because statistics actually don’t lie. However, as shown in the example above, they can be gathered in a manner which distorts the truth.

Thus, statistics are not to be inherently trusted.