--- title: Olympiad: check the claim and spot the trick ★★★ — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: check the claim and spot the trick ★★★», a lesson of the politics course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: In this olympiad lesson every puzzle hides a trick: a number that sounds huge, a clip cut short, a crowd cropped, a ques --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Politics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/) / Olympiad: check the claim and spot the… # Olympiad: check the claim and spot the trick ★★★ Lesson 42 of the politics course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/0/) — In this olympiad lesson every puzzle hides a trick: a number that sounds huge, a clip cut short, a crowd cropped, a question pretending to be a fact; your job is to find it before you believe or share. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/1/) — Numbers can shout: "bike thefts up 100%!" sounds like a crime wave, but in a village it may mean 1 theft last year and 2 this year, just one more bike. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/2/) — Who was asked matters as much as the answer: "9 out of 10 kids love the new lunch" means little if the 10 kids were all standing in the pizza queue. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/3/) — Clips, crops and captions can bend the truth even when every word or picture is real, so look for the full speech, the wide photo and the date before you decide. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/4/) — Real people pile on hyperbole and play things down: "a million people at the rally" in a square that holds 5,000 is an exaggeration to spot, and "not sure yet" is always an honest answer. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/5/) — A percentage change can sound huge when the real numbers are tiny: from 1 to 2 is "up 100%", from 2 to 3 is "up 50%", and from 4 to 6 is also "up 50%". - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/6/) — A survey only tells you about the people it asked; asking just one kind of person, like the pizza queue, gives a lopsided answer. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/8/) — Cropping a photo can make a crowd look huge or tiny, and old videos are sometimes shared with new captions as if they were happening now; this is recycled footage. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/9/) — A headline asking a scary question, like "Will the council ban football?", is not a fact, and headlines often leave out the "maybe" and "only" in the story underneath. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/10/) — Propaganda often uses fear, anger, music and colours instead of reasons, may call a whole group "enemies", and shows only the facts that help one side. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/11/) — Loaded words, such as "brave heroes" or "an angry mob", tell you how to feel; plain words, such as "about 200 people stood outside the town hall", tell you what happened. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/12/) — Misinformation is false information shared by mistake; disinformation is false information spread on purpose; a mistake fixed openly with a correction is not a lie. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/13/) — Likes, shares and a copied logo do not make a story true; a screenshot is easy to change, so find the real article on the outlet's own website. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/14/) — To check a claim, ask who says it, how they know, and who else reports it; if you cannot find out yet, "not sure yet" is an honest answer. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/15/) — Satire is a joke that copies the style of news, like The Onion in the USA or The Beaverton in Canada. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/16/) — The King and the royal family do not vote and do not say which party they support, so a post saying the King voted for a party is false. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/42-olympiad-check-the-claim-and-spot-the-trick/17/) — Yard signs show what some households think, not who will win, because most people never put one up; calling a true story "fake news" because you dislike it does not make it false. - ← previous: [Olympiad: fair votes, close counts and who decides ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/41-olympiad-fair-votes-close-counts-and-who-decides/) - ↑ back to [Politics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/)