Thursday, October 14, 2004
Numbers
I'll have to say that I do appreciate Kerry telling Bush that his numbers are useless during all the debates, because one of my biggest bitches in life/politics/my major is that people rely on numbers in weird ways. See, people like numbers because numbers are objective. Fine. I'll give you that. But, like word problems, numbers are useless without interpretation. Best example ever: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - you must read this if you have not. It's like the Big Lebowski Meets Star Wars of books. I'm really surprised we haven't made this a movie yet, but at the same time I'm glad because a movie would be hard pressed to live up to the brilliance of this book.
But back to the point. The HGTTG answers the meaning of life, and it is 42. See? It's a number, it's objective, and it means jack shit. The book goes onto talk about what we really need is the question, but I have always disagreed. What we need is the paragraph that goes after the number, but see, that's the tricky part.
This is why I hate statistics (that and I'm bad at it, but could that be because I think it's useless? You decide.) As far as I can see, the only reason to study statistics is to figure out how to manipulate them, and I'm just not interested. I prefer to focus on how tone and appearance changes perceptions of What Is and What Is Not. Example: Survey of People Who Voted For Kerry Because Of Bush's Disgusting Spit Wad v. Exit Polls.
So I liked that Kerry told Bush his numbers were stupid, but Kerry used too many numbers himself. They. Don't. Prove. Anything. 42. And I'm definitely not the only one that glazes over when politicans start the Duel of Numbers (paging Zell Miller), so we all do ourselves a favor by just stopping.
For an extremely witty demonstration of the uselessness of statistics, I point you toIron Monkey. I have no idea who this kid is, but I'm seriously tempted to print this out and keep it in my desk forevermore. 38% of people agree with me, up from 20% last year.
But back to the point. The HGTTG answers the meaning of life, and it is 42. See? It's a number, it's objective, and it means jack shit. The book goes onto talk about what we really need is the question, but I have always disagreed. What we need is the paragraph that goes after the number, but see, that's the tricky part.
This is why I hate statistics (that and I'm bad at it, but could that be because I think it's useless? You decide.) As far as I can see, the only reason to study statistics is to figure out how to manipulate them, and I'm just not interested. I prefer to focus on how tone and appearance changes perceptions of What Is and What Is Not. Example: Survey of People Who Voted For Kerry Because Of Bush's Disgusting Spit Wad v. Exit Polls.
So I liked that Kerry told Bush his numbers were stupid, but Kerry used too many numbers himself. They. Don't. Prove. Anything. 42. And I'm definitely not the only one that glazes over when politicans start the Duel of Numbers (paging Zell Miller), so we all do ourselves a favor by just stopping.
For an extremely witty demonstration of the uselessness of statistics, I point you toIron Monkey. I have no idea who this kid is, but I'm seriously tempted to print this out and keep it in my desk forevermore. 38% of people agree with me, up from 20% last year.
