“Facts are stubborn things” is a quote often attributed to Mark Twain. What you may not have heard is the rest of his 19th-century version of stand-up. He supposedly went on to say, “But statistics are pliable.” As one who spends more time analyzing numbers than is probably good for me, I have to smile and respectfully disagree.

Pliable or not, there’s no doubt it’s been quite a week for the usually dry subject of stats.

The release last Friday of the July employment numbers set in motion a cascade of political events, controversy and overreaction. In reality, a deeper dive into the numbers finds a mixed bag of data, with both good and bad news for the president and his economic advisers.

First, the unemployment rate stayed basically the same, going from 4.1 percent in June to 4.2 perce

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