Reading proof for our Monday page, I again run across that famous statistic, "one cat and her offspring produce 420,000 kittens over seven years." It’s in a letter promoting spaying and neutering.
You know, one of these days I’ve got to see that cat. That’s got to be some cat.
Speaking of statistics, there’s an interesting column in The Wall Street Journal today about another one you may have heard before:
Call it the reading income gap: Children from
low-income households average just 25 hours of shared reading time with
their parents before starting school, compared with 1,000 to 1,700
hours for their counterparts from middle-income homes.These oft-repeated numbers originate in a 1990 book by
Marilyn Jager Adams titled, "Beginning to Read: Thinking And Learning
About Print."
Here, according to columnist Carl Bialik, "the Numbers Guy," is where that stat came from:
Ms. Adams got the 25-hours estimate from a study of 24 children in 22
low-income families. For the middle-income figures, she extrapolated
from the experience of a single child: her then-4-year-old son, John.
She laid out her calculations and sources carefully over five pages,
trying to make clear that she was demonstrating anecdotally the
dramatic difference between the two groups.
Mr. Bialik isn’t arguing that the general trend Ms. Adams is trying to describe is false. He notes that the stat "makes sense. It’s a hard thing to measure and therefore hard to contradict; and the figures meld with related research."
But still, he warns against the temptation to which various child-advocacy groups succumb, that of citing the numbers as though they are statistically defensible. They are not. Using data such as that can hurt your credibility, even when you’re right in the overall point you’re trying to make.
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Hey Brad, liars figure and figures lie…this is newsworthy in your mind?
Also:
“Cat…the OTHER white meat.”
“Cats are Gods’ way of telling us that not everything has a purpose.”
Ed
Brad…don’t take what I said above as an attack. I did not intend it that way. It just seems to me that the only remarkable thing about the potential for misuse of statistics is that such misuse is so prevalent as to be unremarkable. Ed
I think it was Mark Twain who said there are three kinds of lies– lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The premise for this is false. Marilyn Jager Adams in fact says almost the opposite of what Bialik claims she said. I deconstruct his piece on my own blog, in a piece entitled, “Carl Bialik: He Seems to Have Credibility, but Does It Really Exist?”
Here’s the link–don’t know if it will let me do a link in a comment like this, but let’s try:
http://outliarjohn.blogspot.com/2007/07/carl-bialik-he-seems-to-have.html
The premise for this is false. Marilyn Jager Adams in fact says almost the opposite of what Bialik claims she said. I deconstruct his piece on my own blog, in a piece entitled, “Carl Bialik: He Seems to Have Credibility, but Does It Really Exist?”
Here’s the link–don’t know if it will let me do a link in a comment like this, but let’s try:
http://outliarjohn.blogspot.com/2007/07/carl-bialik-he-seems-to-have.html
John Dowd is an employee of Marilyn Adams and she probably arm-twisted him into making this post.
Cialis.
Alcohol and cialis. Cialis and levitra. Cialis.