Statistically Speaking

Perhaps you have heard the line about the use of statistics that was attributed to one of our greatest philosophers. Said Mark Twain, "Statistics are like ladies of the evening. Once you get ‘em down you can do anything you want with ‘em." When I quoted the line way back when, I was chastised for being sexist, but we’ll leave that story for another time.

Numbers are omnipresent in news reporting because our civilization is addicted to keeping score of everything, quantifying even when quality is the more important issue. There’s also the issue of context. For instance, a 6.9 earthquake can be devastating or not, depending on how and where it shakes. Or your baseball team might only need to have a single tally in the runs column if your pitcher throws a no-hitter.

But consider that 84,000 jobs were lost in this country last month. Tens of millions of Americans still have jobs, but for the families of those who found themselves out of work, the anxiety level went through the roof. The government also reported that the official unemployment rate was 6.1%, the highest in five years. But that rate doesn’t include all of those people who have given up looking for work.

More alarming is the fact that the millions of Americans who were unemployed weren’t the same people out of work at other times during the past year. In fact, if you ask how many of us have been jobless during the past twelve months, it’s more like 16%.

Here’s another number that doesn’t begin to describe the emotional carnage suffered: The number of home foreclosures hit a record in the second quarter, and no one expects that rate to decline.

Meanwhile, the government is getting ready to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Together they back about half of American’s $12 trillion in mortgages.

Too many statistics? Here’s the bottom line for Obama and McCain: "It’s the economy, stupid."
 

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