Mean, Median and Sex

I found the workings of an old post I never got around to posting. So here it is.

Time for a maths lesson for Gina Kolata of the New York Times, who reported on a survey that found:

…men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners. Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5.

Apparently "mathematicians" don't understand the difference between various measures of central tendency:

But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct.

Um, yeah, they can. This falls under the category of Misuse of Information. The explanation is pretty much the same as the example in our book, but dirtier.

The mean number of partners for men and woman has to be the same. But the median, as was quoted above, does not. The majority of women tend to have less sexual partners than the majority of men. The median for women is lower. However, there could be enough dirty women who have many, many partners - enough to keep the means even, but skew the distribution.

To be fair to Kolata, she and her mathematician corrected this the next week:

He had looked at the actual data from the survey citing medians and found that it could not possibly be correct. Of course he knew the difference between a median and a mean.

It's still a good example nonetheless. (And a good example of why you should always say what you mean, with all the caveats, as clearly as possible.)

Kim Jong-Il popularity plummets to 120%

Yes, it's true, the second-most popular leader in the history of the world is losing popularity. See the Onion for further details.

Alzheimer's Survey Shock Finding

From "America's Favourite News Source - The Onion. For those critical of survey data... worth a look.

Half empty cup actually half full - shock story

The story:

AUSTRALIAN parents are largely unhappy with the quality of school education, says a new Federal Government report.

The survey of 2000 parents, conducted earlier this year, found many believed their children were receiving a substandard education. Only 58 per cent of parents said primary schooling was up to scratch, and less than 40 per cent said secondary schooling was acceptable.

Those with a child in a non-government school were happier with both education and teacher quality than those with a child in a state school.

Same data, different spin (I shifted a few descriptors around):

AUSTRALIAN parents are largely happy with the quality of school education, says a new Federal Government report.

The survey of 2000 parents, conducted earlier this year, found that most believed their children were receiving a standard education, or a better than standard education. Fully 58 per cent of parents said primary schooling was up to scratch, and many said secondary schooling was acceptable.

Those with a child in a non-government school were even happier with both education and teacher quality than those with a child in a state school.

Jono's views on Climate Change

Climate change seems to be all the rage these days, and this blog is no exception. I thought I'd share the views of "Jono" as stated in a comment thread on Andrew Bartlett's blog:

The best way to become carbon neutral is to stop breathing.

As much as the Greens and environmentalists would love us to all just shut up and die, they aren’t even going to hint at it when they discuss their hairbrained policies and regulations.

Instead they will talk about abstract nonsense like “the environment” and “climate change”.

So what? The climate changes, it always has for centuries, why does it become a political issue to justify yet another massive tax and invasion of property rights ?

The Greens are the biggest threat to liberty since communism.

With a very quick review of these insightful few words I found examples of:

False Positioning and an Unfounded Generalisation: … as the Greens and environmentalists would love us to all just shut up and die…

Weasel Words: …they will talk about abstract nonsense like “the environment” and “climate change”.

Misuse of Information followed by Motive Impugning: The climate changes, it always has for centuries, why does it become a political issue to justify yet another massive tax and invasion of property rights ?

And lastly, an Argument to Consequences combined with Poisoning the Well: The Greens are the biggest threat to liberty since communism.

Please note, lest people misread the above, I am not making a case for or against the reality of climate change. I'm just pointing out some dodgy arguments. I've made my position apropos to climate change clear before and can't be bothered to rehash the same old points in the comments section.

Women and maths don’t add up

No, I’m not talking about the fact that they can’t do maths. (Just joking, most of the maths teachers I work with are women and they are excellent mathematicians. Not only that, the male maths teachers are big girls.) I’m talking about the following statement made in an article in today’s Australian - Workplaces wasting our women: Bishop:

High attrition rates by women in law and medicine contrast with their domination of undergraduate courses.

Without any numbers to back that up, I’d believe it. However, statistics would make the point more convincing. The next paragraph has them for us:

Sixty per cent of law students studying at Monash University in 2004 were female, as were more than 70 per cent of medical students. But a Royal Australasian College of Surgeons study found in 1998 that 16 per cent of basic surgical trainees and 13 per cent of advanced surgical trainees were women.

Umm, surely to argue the first point, the stats you’d need are the percentages in an undergraduate course in year X, followed by a follow-up survey of the same women in the occupation for which the course trains them a few year later, year X + 5 (say); not the other way around? These stats tell us nothing of the fates of the undergraduate students from 2004 – surely we need this information to form a conclusion apropos to attrition rates? For all we know, from these stats, it could now (in 2006) be that all these women are working somewhere as basic surgical trainees and advanced surgical trainees - no attrition.

Extremely unlikely I know. As I said, I’d wager that it is still a very low percentage, but please, don’t Misuse Statistics, even if your point is right. If it is right after all, you should have some relevant stats, somewhere, to back you up.

________
Technorati Tagged - Fallacy, Skepticism, Misuse of Information, Statistics.

Michael Moore denies he has pseudologia fantastica…

… but his lengthening nose and grumpy expression, a trademark of all liars, gives it away.

Pseudologia fantastica:

"Despite achieving some success, they don't really believe in their hearts that they're worth very much. They always have to exaggerate in an attempt to be the center of attention, to have people admire them, to feel good about themselves."

(I wasn't sure if it was really necessary to do a distoratature of Moore, but I did one anyway.)

What really upsets me about Moore, more than the asinine Moore-ons who credulously swallow his every contention, is the fact that I was once one of them. Before Bush was first elected I used to watch his show The Awful Truth week in, week out, enjoying it thoroughly, root'n for "the little guy" who Moore so admirably and humorously stood up for. Then I saw Bowling for Columbine which I thought was great, it confirmed everything I already "knew" about those gun crazed seppoes. In one scene Moore shows Charlton Heston to be completely heartless. Heston holds an NRA gun rally just ten days after the Columbine school massacre, one town away. "At this rally", Moore shows Heston making a speech, in which he lifts a gun over his head and says: "… from my cold dead hands."

As I've said before, Moore doesn't like letting little things such as the actual Truth, ruin his Awful "Truth". This is why Moore upsets me so. I see guns in homes as completely unnecessary (except if it is required for one's livelihood). So Bowling for Columbine is preaching to the converted in my case. However, Moore treats us with contempt. The main fallacy I will cite him for here, is Misuse of Information*. In his "documentaries" he manipulates footage and facts, mostly through omission and historical revisionism. His predominant method is rearranging a sequence of events (and footage) or joining disconnected events (and footage) to suit his own ideology. Moore does this in everything he does. Without going into detail, here is actually what happened after Columbine.

The NRA is a non-profit organisation, and as such, by law, each branch is required to have an AGM. At the Denver meeting Moore attacks a callous, the NRA cancelled all events (which normally go over several days) except the AGM for voting members (which, again, by law they had to have). Thus we have Moore's omission. Moore's other tactic is to use a sequence of (disconnected and rearranged) events. Heston's "cold, dead hands speech" which, as depicted by Moore, seems to lead off the Denver meeting happened in Charlotte, North Carolina a year later. It was a gesture of gratitude to a gift (the gun). Now don't get me wrong, the whole lifting of the gun above the head and the "cold, dead hands bit" makes Heston a bit of a clown, but what Moore does to him is unjustifiable. His outright lie and hatchet job on Heston is unforgivable. (Here's Moore's defence, and as you'll see, he tries to justify his approach, saying it all happened. Yes I did Mike, just not in the order you imply it did, and where you imply it did. Thus he refuses to acknowledge his deliberate misuse of footage to paint a false picture of Heston.)

Is this technique a "one off"? No. In F 911 Moore is at it again. Bush's speech at one point in the movie: "This is an impressive crowd of the haves and have mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base." Of course, in its actual context, it turns out that Bush was being self deprecating:

The Al Smith Dinner may have been the liveliest show in New York last Thursday, as presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore donned white tie and took turns poking fun at themselves and each other in speeches that at times had the audience, and Archbishop Egan, in stitches.

There is far too much refuse from Moore for me to cover, and it's been done by others. My point regarding Moore is that every bit of his work tends to be is distorted, twisted, and carefully selected to fit the worldview of a disingenuous Ideologue. So, yes, there may be some truths in his work, but how is one to tell? And if one can't tell, then all his work is not to be bothered with, unless it makes you feel superior to everyone else, which is the only reason people would still believe him.

Finally, I'm going to liberally quote from Christopher Hitchens' review of F 911 , Unfairenheit 9/11:

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Still, at least Moore isn't a crazy as this guy. I wonder if pseudologia fantastica is contagious?

* Though he frequently is guilty of Stacking the Deck, Observational Selection, False Positioning, Personal Abuse, Browbeating, False Analogies, False Attribution, Impugning Motives, okay, I'm sick of listing almost every fallacy we cover, but you get the picture.


More Moore:
... the Awful Truth
...Handsome-ature
... observational selection

Examples of Misuse of Information

The advocate misunderstands or deliberately misuses a statistic, fact or theory to support an argument.

• Mean, Median and Sex
• Women and maths don’t add up
• Michael Moore denies he has pseudologia fantastica…

For a comprehensive and considered written commentary on Misuse of Information (and other fallacies) - see The skeptic's field guide to spotting fallacies in thinking - Humbug!

_____________

Internal Tag: Misuse of Information