Statistically Speaking
Mark Twain is alleged to have said, Statistics are like ladies of the evening. Once you get ‘em down, you can do anything you want with ‘em." I used that quote at a conference in Dallas a number of years back to illustrate how some statistics were so out of proportion that no fudging explanation could mitigate the stark reality the numbers described. Even if they were off by 50%. And the number I was talking about was the 83% rate of poverty among farm workers.
Nonetheless, when I had finished my presentation, I was cornered by an unpleasant woman who felt it was her duty to accuse me of sexism for using the quote. I acquiesced courteously, because back then, you didn’t just slap her silly for being stupid. Uh, that’s a joke. Also, I was feeling high from all the accolades I’d received for making the critical points in my talk.
I raise this issue of statistics because I think they’ve gotten a bad name. The fact is that numbers in context can express important information. Such as the fact that two-cycle personal watercraft generate as much pollution as a new car traveling 130,000 miles. Or the fact that virtually all of the air pollution at Yellowstone Park is created by snowmobiles, which, by the way, account for only six percent of the vehicles in the park.
Faced with these numbers, people who own and manufacture these polluting vehicles cry Foul, and they aren’t referring to what their vehicles are doing to the air. They say these statistics are wrong, though apparently they aren’t, and then they say that they have inalienable rights to muck up the air — excuse, to ride their personal spewing crafts — because, because they want to.
Here are a couple of other numbers that pretty much say it all. The foundation organized in the memory of Nicole Brown — the ex-wife of OJ Simpson — handed a little over $5-thousand dollars to charity while spending $175,000 on expenses. Death be not proud.
Roland Atkinson, who plays the character Mr. Bean in a television program and a film that British apparently think is funny, loves expensive cars and has made enough money to feed his fancy. Recently, he rear-ended another vehicle, causing significant damage to the front end of his own car. Ya gotta think repairs are going to be pricey, since he spent 665-thousand pounds — more than a million dollars — on the car. Love is a many-splintered thing.
And finally, this pair of statistics. Ninety percent of the people on our dear planet Earth believe in a supreme being. And ninety percent of psychologists and psychiatrists don’t. Folks...that be a clue.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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