Click here if you have nothing better to do than listen to me bitch (443 hits)
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Submitted by Andrew Livingston <fadetoyellow.at.graffiti.net> (View user info) at 2006-08-02 16:15:35 EDT
I'm so fucking sick and tired of statistics.
When will people learn?
Everywhere you go it's "studies show" this and "surveys show" that and "we can somehow tell that 77% of an immeasurably large group does or thinks so-and-so because we've interviewed about 0.000001% ourselves."
Sigh.
Statistics are proof like perhaps no other of how utterly unconcerned most human beings are with thinking for themselves rather than just accepting something because everyone says so rather than stopping to consider whether it's true or even knowable. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, let's take a look at exactly how mathematically valid these statistics are. The ones people cite most often in my country, America, are the Gallup poles. Now the Gallup people recently surveyed 1,013 people to determine an estimate of George W. Bush's approval rating among the American people. Thing is, if you're willing to believe the United States census (more on censuses later), then there are 298,444,215 Americans altogether.
That means that only one American out of every some 300,000 odd people was polled. And each one of these people are somehow magically capable of representing the other hundreds of thousands? Did the other hundreds of thousands them their representative? You're talking about taking something like taking 1/3,000th of a percent of the population and thinking the other 99.999% or so are automatically anything remotely approaching the same as that 1/3,000th of a percent. By my calculations, this poll mathematically equivalent to going to Phoenix, Arizona, finding *one* person in that entire sprawling capital city, polling that ONE person, and judging the ENTIRE city as being represented by him or her. If you did that, people would scoff at you and call you a stereotypical, foolhardy weirdo—but once do mathematically the same thing, proportionately on a much larger scale, in an official poll, and everyone believes that you have more than an astronomical chance of accurate results. Nobody will question you.
Nor does it end with Gallup polls. Take number-based "studies", which are really just more surveys. For example, take a 2003 survey of 9,611 Americans to determine how well informed were the people of this country about the war in Iraq. I will not dispute that this poll may very well be accurate to the degree of coming up with a negative answer, an easy guess anyway since it's a 50-50 shot, but the snag is the actual numbers they offer: they're surveying one out of every 31,052 people in the country. If you insist on trusting statistics then you must accept that even if this survey were of *fifty* thousand Americans, that would still be about the mathematical equivalent of surveying everyone in the country who turns sixty-five on a given day and having his or her solitary answer represent all those other people of the same age in all fifty states.
But what of census anyway? I used such figures and compared some statistics to others only to show you how statistics always contradict each other (not to mention that they tend to say exactly what people want them to say anyhow—ever notice that?). Do you think that all the illegal immigrants who come to America each year alone all take the census? People who got their green cards the day the census was taken? What about unknown drifters? There are perhaps millions of them, wouldn't you guess? People who are misrepresented by unnoticed lies or mistakes on the census? People who have faked their own deaths? If the census came once a year then it would be inaccurate enough, but it comes along once a decade. In a country as populous as mine where the census purports that there are some three hundred million people, I think we can safely bet that it's off by several million at least.
I'll bet that at this point a lot of you are saying, "But regardless of the numerical improbability, statistics tend to be accurate!" You might as well tell me that you're likely to win the lottery despite the numerical improbability involved—it's the same (how I hate to use this word here) logic that you're using. Let me ask you: how do people supposedly know in the first place that these quantifications tend to be accurate? Because of even *more* mathematically implausible quantifications operating on the same sorts of jumps to conclusions? Most of which contradict and theoretically disprove each other anyway?
Even if statistics *were* more accurate, life is more than a series of numbers, people. Does the word "happenstance" mean anything to you? When will people learn that a large cluster of things happening in certain circumstances doesn't necessarily mean that the circumstances are causing those things to happen, or that there's only one reason why things happen a certain way? It's the same logical fallacy involved with the superstitious thinking of a man assuming a black cat crossing his path somehow caused him to fired from work later when he was caught snorting cocaine as he performed sodomy on the boss's underage daughter.
So the next time you feel little rattling off some number, stop and think, "Wait a minute: is there any way people can really know this, and does it even matter if it's true?"
Rant over.
User Reviews
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:51:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:36:05 (#)
Ranking: -2
Take another bite out of the shit sandwich, Bucky.
---
Well lookie there! The Shlongster saying something somewhat amusing.
Good boy!
Submitted by UnderOathMeal (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:42:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
"I'm so fucking sick and tired of statistics."
++++++++
And guess who WE'RE sick and tired of?
I'll give you a hint. Starts with 'Y' and ends with 'U'.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:36:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Take another bite out of the shit sandwich, Bucky.
Submitted by marginwalker (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:24:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
ballsy, dude.
Submitted by Foolproof (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:21:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I'm so tired of multi-posters.
When will people learn.
Sigh.
THIS was a bad idea.
Submitted by WildcatMcGee (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:19:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Speak engrish.
Submitted by leilani (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:19:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.ubersite.com/m/83162
Submitted by MANICMOTHER (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:17:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
What can I say, I had nothing better to do.
Submitted by moneyshotforyou (user info) at 2006-08-02 16:16:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I can't hear you, stop talking spanish.