Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Statistics, Politics and YOU
My guess is that most people don't understand statistics.
Words like probability, standard deviation, population, sample, control, mean, t-test, chi squared, etc. have very little meaning to the average Joe/Joan.
Yet statistics are often quoted by politicians and news articles as proof of their point. A language that everyone uses but few understand.
I am going to use statistics in a minute, so, in and effort to be clear, here is a brief overview of some basic statistics principles.
********************CAUTION********************
If you don't like math skip to the end of this section (marked by *'s).
Population: an entire group, in this case, men in the United States.
Sample: part of a population that is surveyed, or measured in some way.
Mean: the average of the measurement of the sample.
Standard Deviation: the amount of variance in the measurement of the sample.
There are two ways to determine the average height of men in America. First you could measure the height of every man in America and take the average. This might be a little hard because there are quite a few people in this population. But, when you were done, you would know with 100% certainty that you had the exact average height of American men.
The second thing you could do is select a sub-group, a cross-section of the population, called a sample. Measure the sampled group and take the average. However, this is not the true average, it has a degree of uncertainty and variability associated with it. These values can be quantified, but we won't get into that. Suffice it to say that instead of an average you have a mean and a standard deviation. So you can say with a known degree of certainty that the population will fall in the range defined by these numbers. Let's say you measured the mean average height to be 56" and the standard deviation was 6". You are, in effect, saying that if you had the chance to measure the height of all men in America the average would be between 50" and 62".
But, if your sample is too small the data will be skewed. The sample must be large enough to be significant for the resulting data to make any kind of sense.
So, statistics is the mathematical science of relating samples to the trends of the population. Useful for production, quality control, and elections.
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So, here is my point: your vote does not matter. In relation to the population (all people who vote) you are not significant.
To be significant you must align yourself with the majority group. And then, within that group, you are not significant. A vote is like a dollar. If you are trying to win a bidding war for a Picasso you won't win by yourself. You need to get about 40 million others to all pitch in their vote-dollar for the painting. So, then, who owns the painting? And what if I wanted a different Picasso, but settled for this one because the others didn't have enough voters?
Thus, to be a politician, you need to pander to the majority, automatically ruling out the single voter.
What should we do? I don't know. Nothing probably, just recognize that our vote doesn't count, and know that, ultimately, our fate is up to God. ¶ 1:07 PM
My guess is that most people don't understand statistics.
Words like probability, standard deviation, population, sample, control, mean, t-test, chi squared, etc. have very little meaning to the average Joe/Joan.
Yet statistics are often quoted by politicians and news articles as proof of their point. A language that everyone uses but few understand.
I am going to use statistics in a minute, so, in and effort to be clear, here is a brief overview of some basic statistics principles.
If you don't like math skip to the end of this section (marked by *'s).
Population: an entire group, in this case, men in the United States.
Sample: part of a population that is surveyed, or measured in some way.
Mean: the average of the measurement of the sample.
Standard Deviation: the amount of variance in the measurement of the sample.
There are two ways to determine the average height of men in America. First you could measure the height of every man in America and take the average. This might be a little hard because there are quite a few people in this population. But, when you were done, you would know with 100% certainty that you had the exact average height of American men.
The second thing you could do is select a sub-group, a cross-section of the population, called a sample. Measure the sampled group and take the average. However, this is not the true average, it has a degree of uncertainty and variability associated with it. These values can be quantified, but we won't get into that. Suffice it to say that instead of an average you have a mean and a standard deviation. So you can say with a known degree of certainty that the population will fall in the range defined by these numbers. Let's say you measured the mean average height to be 56" and the standard deviation was 6". You are, in effect, saying that if you had the chance to measure the height of all men in America the average would be between 50" and 62".
But, if your sample is too small the data will be skewed. The sample must be large enough to be significant for the resulting data to make any kind of sense.
So, statistics is the mathematical science of relating samples to the trends of the population. Useful for production, quality control, and elections.
So, here is my point: your vote does not matter. In relation to the population (all people who vote) you are not significant.
To be significant you must align yourself with the majority group. And then, within that group, you are not significant. A vote is like a dollar. If you are trying to win a bidding war for a Picasso you won't win by yourself. You need to get about 40 million others to all pitch in their vote-dollar for the painting. So, then, who owns the painting? And what if I wanted a different Picasso, but settled for this one because the others didn't have enough voters?
Thus, to be a politician, you need to pander to the majority, automatically ruling out the single voter.
What should we do? I don't know. Nothing probably, just recognize that our vote doesn't count, and know that, ultimately, our fate is up to God. ¶ 1:07 PM