Facts and opinions

Tommy loves basketball. He knows a lot about his favourite team: number of wins they have this season, how many points each player scores on average... He’s memorized data and details about the team. He knows a lot of facts. He also has a lot of personal views about the team.

He makes judgements and has his own ideas about how they should play. “I could play better in my sleep!” He has a lot of opinions. You probably also know facts and have opinions about things that you like, or even the things you don’t like! Facts and opinions are often used together in texts and speeches. When this happens, it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between facts and opinions. So how can we learn to identify facts and opinions?

A statement that can be proven to be correct, verified, is a fact. Since facts can be proven, they are an important source of information that we can trust. Meanwhile, statements expressing feelings, attitudes or beliefs are opinions. They are neither true nor false. Opinions cannot be proven, and that is why they need to be questioned and carefully evaluated.

Look at the following statement: Basketball is an exciting sport. Is this an opinion, or a fact? While we know that it is a fact that basketball is a sport, we can’t prove that it’s an exciting sport.. In fact, we can just as easily say the opposite, and it still wouldn’t be “wrong”: Basketball is a boring sport. And if you asked ten people “which sport is most exciting?”, you might get ten totally different answers.

Opinions can differ from person to person. So these are opinions. Neither of the statements above are wrong, and either or both could be true. Let’s look at another statement: A basketball is bigger than a tennis ball. What happens if we switch this around?: A tennis ball is bigger than a basketball.

Is this still true? When we look at a tennis ball and a basketball side by side, we can clearly see that a basketball is much bigger. This is not about how we feel: it’s what we observe. And we can also prove it! The International Tennis Federation defines the official diameter of a tennis ball as 6.54–6.86 cm.

Meanwhile, the official diameter of an NBA basketball is 24cm - over 3 times bigger! So this is a fact that we can prove to be true. Not every text or speech is meant to be factual. For example, many newspapers run pages with opinions from writers and readers called op-eds. Opinions can be good for starting discussions, and helping us understand how the people around us feel.

Opinions can also be based on facts. After learning about basketball diameter, Tommy might think: “basketballs are much bigger than tennis balls.” But in many cases, they are based on someone's own life and experience — their “in-built” point of view. We call this their bias. Bias can lead people to present opinions as if they were facts. Tommy is biased towards the team he likes.

He will always say his favourite team is the best, even if they lose every game. So it’s important to look closely at information and ask, is this fact, or is it opinion? And if it is opinion, is it based on fact, or on bias? So Tommy will get back to sharing his opinions about the game. “If I was in the game, I’d have scored 40 points by now!” Whatever you say Tommy...