About this project

The 2016 U.S. Presidential election is one of the most contentious in recent times.  Accusations of lying abound on both sides.  This experiment is an attempt to visually interpret how much lying is done by both sides.

A fact is something that is true.  Facts are not arguable; by their nature they are true and there is no argument to their truth.
A lie is a false statement.  For the sake of this experiment, lies are considered as such if they can be proven to be lies.

In the course of rhetorical arguments, one must be careful when listening to different statements.  For instance, let's say someone says something, which we will call "Statement A", then later says she did not make that statement.  This later statement we will call "Statement B".  If there's clear evidence that this person did make Statement A, then Statement B is a lie.

Regarding figures and statistics, things are not much more complicated.  If a quoted number is close to the actual figure, then it should be considered to be close enough to be accurate.  If a figure is used which is considerably incorrect by some appreciable margin, it should be considered inaccurate.  The larger the deviation, the greater the inaccuracy, and we can begin to consider its' use to be a deliberate lie.