Sept. 07, 2003 - 21:25 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

By Those Numbers

Linda Seebach -- She has a column in today 9/07/03 that says it like I think it is. Twisting facts and math to suit one's own purpose

She wrote a good column. She points out some of the ridiculous facts ? and figures that are used to prove that green is orange -- or something it isn't.

She starts out, "This sounds like a riddle: What do you get when you average the percentage of married women aged 15 to 49 using birth control with the percentage of central government expenditure spent on education ? Alas, it isn't a riddle; its a joke."

She then says, "Those are two of the indicators used in a new report by an anti-growth group called Population Connection to rank 'Kid Friendly Countries.'"

Ms. Seebach goes on, "I do not understand the touching, even magical faith some people put in the process of converting a bunch of wildly disparate measurements to the same scale and computing the average."

She gives examples. "In some cases, such as students' grade-point averages, the process makes sense. Sure, English and math and history are different subjects, but combining a student's performance in different subjects yields a useful overall measure of academic achievement. If we were to start adding in other stuff, however -- hours per day spent watching television, for example, or days absent from school -- by converting them to percentile scores and averaging them with class grades, the result would tell us less about performance, not more. Those things are related to success in school, of course, just not that way."

Ms. Seebach goes on, "But people will do it Why? Population Connection, which describes itself as 'an organization dedicated to slowing population growth,' rhetorically asks that question of itself and answers itself that, 'history shows that as population growth slows in a country, the quality of life in that country rises,' so population stabilization is essential to ensuring a high quality of life."

She goes on, "But anyway, that's their starting point, so it is to be expected that stabilization of population is one of their measures. As a result the United States, whose population is expected to grow by 44 percent by 2050, gets a B minus, while Italy where populations is expected to fall by 10 percent, gets an A minus."

Ms. Seebach makes a good point next, "U.S. population growth is almost entirely the result of immigration; birth rates for the native population are almost exactly at replacement level (supposedly the goal to strive for). In Italy, though, the lifetime fertiltiy rate for women is dropping toward 1.2 children. Unless the Italians get a lot friendlier to children, they will be extinct as a people within a few generations.

And then from the ridiculous to the zany, Ms. Seebach has this, "Or take one education measure: central government spending. Yes, the report does note that it does not consider funding from 'cities, districts, states, counties, provinces, and the like.' But the U.S. gets a B minus on this one , too -- along with such educational powerhouses as Guatemala and Kazakhstan -- beause for historical reasons most of our national spending on education is done at local and state levels. Are we less friendly to our kids on that account ? No, but having chosen a silly indicator allows Population Connection to claim, 'Developed countries spend a miniscule amount of money on education.'"

Along with other comparisons with phony, phaulty statistics she makes this comment, "A lot of international comparisons of this sort seem designed to make the United States look bad, but that doesn't seem to be on the agenda here. In fact because of its high income, the United States comes out in seventh place overall, out of the 80 countries with populations of 10 million or more included in the report. But it still makes no sense to compute an average containing such incompatible statistics as per-capita income and availability of sanitation."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Always come figures from the capacious pockets of those who are trying to prove something that really is not true I think. Apples plus oranges with a few raisins added doesn't always come out as fruit salad and when incompatible figures are grouped things don't just work out correctly when computed and averaged By Those Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Blog