LYING WITH STATISTICS

[Moat]

Originally posted by pedalinbob:

it is all in perspective...or, it is all relative!

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">That's exactly it - statistics, themselves, should be a perfectly factual and reliable means of describing something. But too often the analysis itself is so complex, inter-woven, and far reaching (or just simply confusing) that it is impossible for someone to have a clear, intuitive "perspective" or "relative" understanding of what the results really mean, without long and detailed study of the particulars . I'll bet that's how they're used by those with questionable agendas to influence government policy - busy politicians have to know a little (not enough "particulars") about a lot of issues. The Hydrogen Economy policies (discussed in another thread) as a perfect example - when you really look into the details, it begins to make no sense. That's also how so many of us average folks/consumers are so easily and deliberately mis-led. We're too busy struggling over bills and taxes to devote effort to studying the dang-blasted "particulars" !!

How about this one, that we've all seen;

"Super efficient LED's take only 1/10th the power of conventional incandescent lights...... batteries last 10 times as long!!!"

That statement - in itself - is true, but they fail to mention the result is about 1/10 of the light output!!! Just a minor particular, right..........?

I tend to take stats with a healthy dose of salt.

Bob

 

[pedalinbob]

well stated, Peter.

i was commenting on many people (that i deal with daily) who believe that the rich pay less tax than the rest of us, and under the Bush tax plan they will get a proportionally larger cut--which is incorrect. it is all proportionate.

"Here's something O.T. for ya.
My favorite statistical trick lately is Bush's statement something to the effect of the average family getting around $1000.00 from his tax cut.

Imagine Bill Gates walks into a soup kitchen where 60 homeless people are. The average wealth has just become a Billion Dollars!!"

this was from TedtheLED, which IMPLIES that the proposed tax cuts are bogus, and favor the wealthy. you are correct, no one stated that the rich pay NO tax...but it sure is implied above that the rich pay less and/or they will get a far greater rebate--which is incorrect.

your ideas on taxes are interesting.

i kinda like the idea of a flat tax. perhaps 10% off the top? can you imagine: the tax form would be the size of a post-it note!

Bob

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Originally posted by pedalinbob:
well stated, Peter.
"Here's something O.T. for ya.
My favorite statistical trick lately is Bush's statement something to the effect of the average family getting around $1000.00 from his tax cut.

Imagine Bill Gates walks into a soup kitchen where 60 homeless people are. The average wealth has just become a Billion Dollars!!"

this was from TedtheLED,
Bob

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">nope, it was from PeterM...damn details...
though the rich still have millions left after taxes, especially after tax write-offs for every lunch and dinner, the yacht, the villa in Europe, etc..

 

[Greta]

Originally posted by Ted the Led:
...though the rich still have millions left after taxes, especially after tax write-offs for every lunch and dinner, the yacht, the villa in Europe, etc..

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I still don't understand why that is wrong...

 

[James S]

I'm not a rich man, (at least in monetary terms

but I hope to be one someday!

I know some very wealthy people well enough to know a little about their finances and they pay a LOT of money in income taxes. Beyond a certain point they don't even get any of the tax shelters that you and I enjoy. I'm not sure where the cut off for a 401k kind of plan is, but it's not much over $100k and you're not allowed to put any more money into it.

The belief that the Rich somehow pay less tax is a fraud perpetrated by a particular political party to get the non-rich people to rally behind them to fight yet another nonexistent enemy. This kind of divide and conquer garbage makes me mad.

 

[pedalinbob]

oops..sorry Ted!

still bleary eyed from last night's shift...35 post-ops in 7 hours. ouch. (im a surg/critical care nurse)

these have really been some thought evoking discussions--i like it! even if we dont agree, we can certainly enlighten each other with some new ideas/perspectives.

just when i think i know everything, one of you knuckleheads have to humble me...heh, heh.

it has also been remarkably civil.

im going to play with a flashlight now....i need some brainless activity!

Bob

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Sasha, I didn't say it was wrong. But it's a lie, illegal, and doesn't help fund the national health, some of, if not most of the time..? Basically my point was the rich are really rich and get richer, one way or another..

JamesS are you responding to anything in particular anyone has posted in this string? Don't get mad, get even..

pedalinbob, you shouldn't be over-worked like that...

 

[Greta]

Originally posted by Ted the Led:
Sasha, I didn't say it was wrong. But it's a lie, illegal, and doesn't help fund the national health, some of, if not most of the time..? Basically my point was the rich are really rich and get richer, one way or another..

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I'm sorry Ted but I don't see how it's a lie, illegal and doesn't help fund national health. Please expand on that? And again I'll ask what's wrong with the rich being really rich and getting richer? My only heartburn with that is that I'm not one of them... what's everyone else's problem with it?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

....meow...Sasha you must have misunderstood; you don't think it's not a crime to say something was a business expense and therefore get a tax credit on a yacht or house or lunch? I think it's called "fraud." It doesn't help the national health, or anything, because it's money that is never collected...
why that is wrong is because there is no reason for the rich to get richer
except that the game of our economy is unfair... for example if a rich guy
owned a garbage truck with 3 workers and he could afford $100,000 to have a
mechanical arm do the work of the two workers on the back, he could fire the
two workers and do the job cheaper than the other garbage guys--eventually,
the guy with the most money can put in the most capital (that's why we call
it capitalism) and his 1-man mechanized garbage trucks can put all the other
3-man garbage trucks out of business and take all the business for himself
and his 1-man garbage crews (it is cheaper to only have one man and a
machine rather than 2 guys with salaries and health benefits year-in
year-out)... so we now have all thse out of work garbage guys who aren't
needed anymore--they can't afford a decent life for themselves or their
families or grandparaents and the one guy with all the garbage trucks is
paying plenty in taxes but basically has most of the money and the good life
while his canned employees (who were labor not capital) are part of the
growing underclass whose lives suck and watch TV and hope to win the
lottery.  So if the rich get big tax write offs who is going to provide a
social "safety net" for people without capital, who only work by the sweat
of their brows, so to speak?   Without taxes and social ptrograms, ruthless
capitalism will make a few filthy rich and most others, wretched.  It is so
easy to be nice and a gentleman when you're rich... to be poor and human is
much more difficult...  you know?  what does it mean to be human?  to love,
to have compassion and to realize we are all in this thing together--so just
dopn't forget about the 200,000,000 americans making less than $35,000. a year
for a family of four, while 80,000,000 are doing just great, going to
private schools and going shopping.  It is not human to be selfish--it is
egotistical and deluded--you will not be full of joy.  So there are 2
reasons not to give the rich tax breaks (1) it's not fair and (2) no one
will be happy...  mroww...

 

[GJW]

But the same rules that allow the rich man to buy the yacht allowed me to buy a computer so I could get work as a self-employed draftsman.
Those same rules would allow the garbageman to buy his own truck and start his own garbage collecting business.
Are you saying that there should be no business expense exemptions or just none for the rich?
And who defines rich?
Al Gore defined it as making $27,000 a year.

 

[Brotherscrim]

Carefully sidestepping this whole Rich v Poor business, I would like to say something about all of the brainless "scientific" studies and their conclusions that you hear on the news and such. One of my personal favorites (and the only example I can think of at the moment, conveniently) is one I heard on NPR one day.

Apparently, some University researchers, (if you can call polling "research") who doubtless got at least some of their funding from taxpayers, /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif concluded that people who pray regularly live longer than people who don't. The implication the researchers made from this discovery is that praying is good for your health. While not entirely out of the question, I'll bet that I have a better explanation for the data.

How about this: People who pray alot are religous. Religous people go to church. Churches look out for their members, especially the elderly and destitute among them. They give them money to help with bills and better ensure they have good food to eat, etc. Proper diet, decent housing, money for healthcare and plain old attention from people who care improve the quality and length of life.

I'll venture a guess that I am not a super genius and that most people, if asked, could come up with a similar conclusion/scenario to my own.

Here's another one. I nearly lost my lunch a few years back when I tuned in to an address given by our Surgeon General at the time (don't remember his name, he was SG during Clinton's time) when he said that tens of billions of dollars were spent to find out whether minorities smoked ciggarettes more than whites.

Dude, I would have told them that for nothing. Now, how could I know that? It's simple. Minorities, as a group, are poorer than whites. Poor people are more likely to smoke, drink, and do drugs in a vain attempt to feel better about themselves because being poor sucks. Duh!

Besides, what was he gonna do with this data anyway? target anti-smoking advertisements and such to minorities? I thought that smoking was bad for EVERYONE! How about we save the money spent figuring out who is slowly killing themselves slowly and spend it on helping them stop?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

GJW -
I ommited 4 words from the previous post and just found out I can't edit it, the time alotment has expired..mmm maybe Sash can extend that a bit..?
The sentence should have read:
" ..you don't think it's not a crime to say something was a business expense when it was not, and therefore get a tax credit on a yacht or house or lunch? " my error. didn't mean to imply no one should get a tax write-off.. sorry. heh. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif ?

 

[GJW]

[ QUOTE ]
Apparently, some University researchers, (if you can call polling "research") who doubtless got at least some of their funding from taxpayers, /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif concluded that people who pray regularly live longer than people who don't.

[/ QUOTE ]

More sidestepping but the study I recently heard said that sick people who were "prayed for" did better than those that weren't.
It was supposedly a double-blind study where the sick people had no idea they were being prayed for.
Spooky!

 

[pec50]

The problem with statistics is not the statistics; the mathematics is usually sound. The problem is that people do not realize that the statistic is integrated into a research model and this model must be used to interpret the outcome. The statistical processes and research models themselves are well defined and their limitations, for the most part, well documented. But, the resultant interpretation of outcomes often leaves much to be desired. That is, we can employ reasonable statistics and research design, but this does not always translate into proper reporting of the outcomes. The "media" tends to simply present the statistics without the grounding from which the statistics were derived. A classic example is using the SAT college test to determine whether scores are rising or lowing in a particular state. But, the SAT is a voluntary process, and participation in the SAT test varies with economic trends. Thus, when the economy is poor, more people elect to go on to college and they take the SAT. This obviously lowers the overall SAT scores. The media reports that SAT scores are going down without providing the model from which the statistics are based. -- a stats prof.

 

[Scoper]

Some advice for scientific presentations.

If you have seen something happen once, say "In our experience, we have observed..."

If something has happened twice, say: "We have repeatedly observed..."

If something has happened three times, say: "Time and time and time again..."

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

hssss ..ok so we're all done with this string then? we'd rather lookit the big gun in the truck, heh? oh well..I tried..

mrow. :kitty: /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sleepy.gif

 

[LuxLuthor]

Can this be bumped?

 

[ICUDoc]

yup, it can. Made for a good read. La plus ca change, c'est plus la meme chose.....

 

[TedTheLed]

yes but the prob was it couldn't be found, especially if you searched "by TedtheLed." (couldn't find it by searching the title only either)

I'm guessing you should respond with (kind brilliant courteous) posts to this thread, and use the other post with my byline to find this thread -- ???

 

[LuxLuthor]

I'm guessing you should respond with (kind brilliant corteous) posts to this thread

You do realize that Pleasantville was just a movie, right?