He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination. – Andrew Lang
Does anyone remember number puzzles? In a way they were the predecessors of Rubik’s cube, and I used to love them as a child (though I haven’t played with one in decades). The puzzle is simply a small tray in which there are fifteen numbered tiles which can be slid vertically or horizontally; in the most basic form of the game one slides the tiles around until they’re in numerical order. There are, however, other ways to play; my favorite was to make the sequence go in a clockwise spiral rather than four rows. Another was to line up all the odd numbers in sequence, followed by the evens. Because the tiles couldn’t be removed from the tray without breaking the puzzle, one often had to do considerable back-and-forth shifting to solve it, much as one does with a Rubik’s cube (though obviously the cube is more complex).
Manipulating statistics to serve a particular agenda is something like a number puzzle, in that a skilled but unethical statistician has to do a lot of shifting numbers around to make the image within the frame look like he wants it to look; once that’s achieved it takes more shifting by a debunker to get the numbers back where they started. Of course, it’s an imperfect analogy; in the puzzle one sequence is as valid as another, whereas in real life that isn’t so. Also, the numbers of the puzzle move in only two dimensions while those in a study might move in several. And while cheating by removing the tiles from the tray and re-arranging them will leave obvious signs of tampering and may even break the toy completely, sometimes it’s difficult to tell exactly how a dishonest statistician rigged his numbers without careful analysis by another statistician of equal or greater skill.
Unfortunately, the average person is mathematically illiterate and so is oblivious to even the most egregious manipulation. Tyrannical laws, prohibitionist schemes and pure bigotry are routinely supported by the most outrageous numerical claims, and virtually nobody cries foul: huge fractions of the population are said to be victimized by one crime or another without anyone noticing; large numbers of similar examples are dismissed as unrepresentative anomalies; extremely rare phenomena are touted as indicative of crises or important correlations; physical and economic impossibilities are claimed to be routine occurrences; and statistical outliers are represented as averages or even majorities. And if anyone dares to point out any of it, the inevitable response is a torrent of illogic expressed in meaningless catchphrases such as “If it saves even ONE CHILD!!!!!” which would be false even if they were intellectually coherent.
There was an instructive example of this a few weeks ago. As regular readers know, the Swedish model of prostitution law is marketed by neofeminists and many politicians as a way to “have their cake and eat it, too” by criminalizing only the client side of the transaction and thus repressing women while pretending not to. But even ignoring the incredible injustice of the law, it simply doesn’t do anything it is marketed as doing; it does not decrease prostitution, but it does subject sex workers to police abuse and increases the incidence of STIs, “sex trafficking” and violence. Obviously, this doesn’t sit well with neofeminists, so they simply ignore or deny it; a few weeks ago Samantha Berg published an article claiming that the Swedish model actually reduces violence, and as you might expect it was touted all over the internet by prohibitionists. There’s only one problem with that: the figures she quotes “prove” no such thing, as pointed out by Wendy Lyon:
…there are two really massively important issues here…The 2007-2008 study asked sex workers if they had ever experienced violence, throughout their “entire career in prostitution (which could be anything from one day to 50 years)”. The newer study asked about violence in the past three years alone. These are two very different questions, which can’t possibly give rise to comparable answers…Both surveys recorded sex workers’ experience of violence…wherever it occurred. For the 2012 study, we have a breakdown: 70% of respondents said it only happened in Norway; 12% said Norway and elsewhere; 10% said only elsewhere; 8% didn’t answer…but that is all. We don’t know…which types of violence occurred in which country, or how many of the specific incidents occurred in which country. This makes it impossible to know how much of the reported violence even took place under the Nordic model. And we don’t have any of this data from the 2007-2008 study, so there’s really nothing for us to compare here at all…
Wendy also points out there’s some strange mumbo-jumbo going on in that “rape” and “threatened or forced into sex that was not agreed to” are listed as separate categories even though they’re synonymous, and I noticed that the researchers make the asinine statement that “many of the women would not characterize actual rape as rape” (as though their opinion of what happened to a woman is somehow more important than her own interpretation of it).
Wendy says she didn’t have to dig very deep to discover the problems, but regular reader Kevin Wilson (who is a professional research consultant) looked at it as well and had these things to say in addition to those Wendy listed:
The sample is almost certainly not representative of the sex work industry in Norway at all. Participants were recruited primarily through outreach programs and shelters, so it seems likely that the sample contains workers primarily from the more dangerous segments of the market. Only 17% of the sample is actually from Norway…These two samples are different groups of people, rather than the same group of people tracked over time. This isn’t wrong so much as not ideal for mapping out the intervening effects of criminalization. It’s possible that one sample or the other was more or less exposed to violence due to different sample composition (e.g., if one sample had more indoor workers). In my opinion, this study would have been much better had they either followed the same group of workers from Pre to Post, or asked their current sample about the violence they experienced Pre and Post…There are no margins of error presented, so it’s hard to know which sample-to-sample comparisons are significant/reliable. My speculation is that with such margins included, most of this paper would read as “no effect, no effect, no effect…” due to sample sizes; in many of cases we’re dealing with a lot of small number…the quality of evidence is so low that I’m not confident the findings are accurate or reliable. This isn’t to say that the study is bad in the same way as the Schapiro Group study, merely that the quality isn’t very good and so little can ultimately be concluded from this data.
Kevin also shared one other bit of data that Berg didn’t want her audience to see. If we really could make an apples-to-apples comparison as she pretends, we would see that some kinds of violence (including armed threat, kicking and strangulation) increased while others (including rape, robbery and being thrown out of a car) decreased. But take a look at this table, which shows the change in how much help sex workers have been able to obtain from various sources after experiencing that violence:
Customer | 25% |
No One | 17% |
Hospital | 0% |
Friends | -16% |
Natthjemmet | -17% |
Other | -29% |
Partner | -33% |
Police | -41% |
No Support Required | -42% |
Crisis Center | -50% |
Pro Sentret | -55% |
Nadheim | -70% |
Family | -75% |
Emergency Care | -79% |
Keep in mind that the same caveats apply to this comparison as to the one on violence. But if we were able to make a valid comparison in violence levels, we would also see that there has been a catastrophic drop in whores’ ability to get help for any violence which does occur, and the fraction who had never felt they needed help was cut almost in half. Manipulating statistics is just a game for prohibitionists, a number puzzle intended to advance their agenda by presenting whatever picture they feel would do so most effectively; they are either so detached from reality that they don’t recognize the damage they cause, or so fanatical they just don’t care how many people have to suffer, be brutalized or even die for them to “win” the game.
I’d love to get my hands on that cube.
Not understanding statistics isn’t new, nor is it confined to non-experts. There was a trial of “mini-hep” reported some years ago — “mini-hep” is given to prevent deep venous thrombosis during surgery, and there were anxieties that it could cause “excessive” bleeding. The trial was published in an internationally respected, peer-reviewed scientific journal. The authors concluded:
there was more bleeding in the mini-hep group [than in the control group] but this did not reach statistical significance
I don’t understand your post. Are you saying the quote proves ignorance of statistics? Because it seems like the correct way to say there was more bleeding, but not enough more to place it outside the margins of error given the sample size.
When you read the whole paper it’s quite clear that the authors’ bias is that mini-hep causes “excessive” bleeding and so should not be used. Their data didn’t support their pet theory, they showed that there was no significant difference between treated and control groups. And if there is no significant difference they can’t also claim that there was more bleeding in one group.
It doesn’t take long to learn how to read a scientific paper; so often, for example, the authors expose their biases, their real intentions.
I see both this type of fraud and the kind Kevin Wilson talks about all the time.
Wilson’s “science by sound bite” is the one that makes me more pessimistic about our future, because it’s easy to detect that fallacy — simply treat any news story involving science as an excuse to look up the actual study, or at least the report of it in a scientific journal. You don’t need to know statistics to notice how the TV story left out “under certain conditions” in Kevin’s example — you just need reading comprehension and a willingness to look things up.
The kind of deceptive report Korhomme cites is a little harder for the non-math-major to detect, but even there, there are shortcuts you can use. This book is a good place to start.
The type of story can be a tipoff, too. Any news story that says there’s a “crisis”, especially a food scare or environmental danger, is probably a lie using junk science.
Those number puzzles – it’s impossible to get any combination that you could get to by swapping tiles an odd number of times (ie: odd permutations).
Not sure if there’s a lesson there or not.
Some permutations are impossible with the cube as well, like flipping a single edge, swapping only 2 edges or rotating a single corner once. Disassembling and reassembling the cube lets you do that, though, and it’s less visible than with the number puzzle.
Another lesson there, maybe. Statistical studies are more like the cube than number puzzles. More permutations and tampering is less easily spotted.
Oh, they’re definitely more like the cube than like the puzzles. However, the puzzles have numbers printed on them (which makes the analogy clearer IMHO) and “Number Puzzle” is a much better title for a column about statistical manipulation than “Rubik’s Cube”.
And that gives you a window into part of the composition process for these columns. 😉
I don’t accept statistics of any nature unless I can have access to the raw numbers. Similarly, I don’t trust statements like … “studies prove …” or “there is a scientific consensus on … “
Researchers themselves are usually a lot less confident/grandiose than is typically portrayed by the media whenever it covers some newly released study. I’ve gone through a few rounds with the media over studies, and the cartoon below is basically accurate…
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
Spot on that. I have a cousin who’s a research PhD and is nationally known. No – I have no clue how his DNA related to mine – maybe he was actually adopted or something because he’s by far the smartest person in my entire extended family.
However, he tells me he is under constant pressure to bring in more $$ to the University he works for. He also told me that a lot of unscrupoulus or desperate researchers will turn to some fairly shady sources in order to get those $$ … like oil companies and global warming scare mongers.
This is dead on. Quite often when I look at some controversial study making the news, the actual study results support a much narrower claim than is being reported. Often, too, the study combines several different sources of data in ways that are only valid when used in certain ways — e.g. mixing data from countries with different reporting standards is okay for studying change over time, but not for comparing between countries.
Me too, especially when dealing with polls. How can anyone extrapolate anything from a poll with 123 respondents, especially when only 17% of them are Norwegian. So for the rest they were answering in a foreign language. That’s before we even get into the fact that the report says the respondents were unrepresentative of their clients, let alone prostitutes in Oslo.
As a frequent visitor of Norway …
I have to say … and this will be controversial …
But I actually think that prostituion by Norwegian women has decreased under the Swedish model. Most of the prostitutes … the good one’s anyway … come in from Russia and stay a few weeks and fly right back home. Now, this could be construed as “trafficking” and … if so … it’s increased dramatically (I think) under the Swede Model.
There is also a significant African SW population in Oslo.
Of course … the “good” escorts are going to be high priced – especially in the fear-soaked environment of the Swede Model.
But … I know a lot of Norwegian men who say … “Too dangerous AND TOO EXPENSIVE to hobby in Norway – I go to Germany!”. You can get a two hour flight from Oslo to Frankfurt for around $200 round trip with specials – I use my FF miles and go business class for almost nothing. Travel in the EU is seemless – there’s no visa requirements for anyone who’s a citizen of the EU. It’s very convienient.
Spend three days at an FKK in Frankfurt … and if you’re a middle aged guy like me, it’s enough sex to satisfy you for a whole month.
So this is why I think surveys of this type are useless … if you ask me … the Swede model MAY work to reduce prostitution in the country it’s implemented but, if so … the demand simply moves to Denmark, the Netherlands, or Germany.
Now, expand the Swede model to the entire EU … and there are no longer any “relief valves” – in which case, everyone now is forced to become a law breaker if they decide to swim in the pay sex pool.
So in short – prostitution is like a “balloon” … you can punch it in on one side – it simply expands on the other.
You get similar effects in the US. Seattle says no nipples in the same room as alcohol. So Portland and Vancouver bc are known for excellent strip clubs.
Utah and Idaho make it difficult to get a safe abortion in the first trimester (laws designed to add delay and limit procedures per day to make appointment unavailable) so Denver has specialists that make it safer and sooner than neighbor states.
Big THUMBS UP to Vancouver strip bars! 🙂
What’s the point of strip bars? Doesn’t that just leave you hard and frustrated?
Some brothels have a bar attached, where the providers can approach the clients and persuade them to buy drinks. Later, they may agree a price and go to a room upstairs.
Now, the interesting thing is that some men leave after buying drinks (no sexual contact took place); they just enjoy the unusual situation of being approached by lovely women. Even elite men like this, because in “real life” they have to be careful with amateurs and their ulterior motives.
Also, with actual sex, there is the possibility that sometime could go wrong; not so with stripping, since it is a pure fantasy.
Are you talking about brothels or clip joints? I suppose some men might not want sex but if they’re a strip show I would have thought most would.
My observations apply to brothels, but the point is that even if sex is available, sometimes other things are more important.
Fair enough.
As gumdeo says.
A typical man’s life is one sexual rejection after another. Of course, women don’t see this, because they have a blind spot for typical men, seeing only the atypical ones. But that’s simply the way it is for most men.
For most men, lets say in an office environment, the world is full of women with their hooters hanging out. But God help you if you dip your eyes and notice – those hooters are only to be noticed by the *attractive* men.
So to be in an environment where it’s safe and ok to notice the provocatively clad ladies is exquisite relief. To have these same hot things come up to you smiling and chatty – amazing.
Much of the business in these places is not the lap-dancing, it’s chatting to a girl in exchange for buying her a VL&S (which is actually just water – the house and the girl split the price).
IOW: what these men are looking for is acceptance of themselves as sexual. Not having to wear a paper bag over the head or a metaphorical burqa. Again: you may scoff and say that men are free and can do what they like. But you are wrong – it’s only some men that can. The others go to strip clubs.
For an OEO look at the problem, consult this Educational Film…
Ouch, again!
Ouch! Yeah, I’ve never had to deal with sexual rejection so I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Paul wrote;
But God help you if you dip your eyes and notice – those hooters are only to be noticed by the *attractive* men.
Well, we all know that mass distorts space and can thereby alter
the “line of sight” of a particular photon. I argue that men aren’t actually looking at proscribed breasts, but that the mass involved alters “line of sight” so that it looks like – to the outside observer – that they are…
Yes it does.
But then again … part of the whole thing about being male is being pissed off, hard, and frustrated!! 😀
Which is why strip clubs ought to be allowed to finish off the guy on the premises. It’s dangerous letting all those guys driving home pissed off, hard, and frustrated! Happy endings are a matter of road safety. 🙂
Well, that depends on how closely the strip clubs are following local laws and what actually goes on in the VIP rooms.
Frankly I think it’s unethical not to break the rules, At least with peep shows in Soho they had booths and tissues and walkups nextdoor.
I made a similar point in one of Maggie’s other post about migrant whores (and yes that it trafficking). The Schengen Agreement covers more than just the EU. I regularly travel all over Europe; by plane If I’m travelling from the UK to Sicily but around the Med I’ll take the Maserati it’s not much slower than messing around with airports when my brother’s driving over 280KM/h down the autostrada, or on the back of Moto Guzzi. We never have to produce passports.
Some prostitutes who charge €1500+ a night will travel between European countries to see clients and fly back the next day. My brother used to regularly fly from London to Ibiza to work as the doors. Travel is so easy. I’ve advised a few prostitutes to arrange to bring a gift for the client when they travel internationally so they can’t be prosecuted for entering the country for the purpose of prostitution.
Scandinavia is part of EU (not Finland) but at the same time it’s not really culturally part of Europe. The Swedish model would never be adopted throughout Europe. It would be unenforceable. The Swedish model is only effective against street prostitution and brothels, which are governed by legislation anyway. I have no problem with laws targeting street prostitution as a social nuisance, which it is, or with the licensing, regulating and taxation of brothels but the Swedish model is perverse because it criminalises men for having consensual sex with a women over the age of consent.
It’s Norway that’s out of the EU, not Finland. Norway is part of the Schengen Agreements, though, unlike the UK and Ireland.
Yeah, I meant Norway, I’m not sure why I said Finland it’s not even part of Scandinavia. 🙂
The two studios aren’t comparative at all: the first study had 95 respondents as opposed to 123, and the questionnaires are different. Both these studies are dealing with such insignificant numbers
You must have been playing with some very tightly made number puzzles; I never had trouble removing and replacing the tiles in the ones I had…
So, here’s the thing about polling statistics, the strength of conclusion you can make is tied to the sample size.
100ish people, you have a giant margin of error and even a 65-35 split would be classified as: this suggest that there is a trend for people to prefer A over B.
If you have only a few hundred people or less you can’t say something like “17% more prefer option A over option B which has a 2% advantage over option C” because your numbers are just too small to give you that sort of specificity.
Not to mention that many polls have, in addition to indequate sample size, improper sample types. Just because everyone in a certain geographic area prefer ‘A’ over ‘B’ doesn’t necessarily mean that this is a nationwide, or even statewide, trend.
Maggie wrote;
(as though their opinion of what happened to a woman is somehow more important than her own interpretation of it).
I think that that is the spirit of the present age. Exhibit A – Cass Sunstein. Exhibit B – Cass Sunstein on someone else promoting the idea that we’un jus’ need ta shut it and listen to our betters.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/mar/07/its-your-own-good/?pagination=false
Another example of the misuse of statistics, this time with a tragic outcome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark
On a previous computer, I had Zillions of Games. One of the games it came with was the basic number puzzle. It was fun watching the computer solve it, but I never had the patience to solve it myself. My friend Tracy, OTOH, took all the time it needed, and she solved that sucker. Not as fast as the computer, but she wanted to solve it herself, and she did.
I realize that this has nothing to do with anything here except the puzzles themselves, but that’s what I always think of when I see one of those puzzles.
The algorithm is pretty straightforward. You can move a piece any way you like by looping the blank tile around the right (to move the tile up) or the bottom (to move the tile left). So its easy to move tiles into all but the last two rows and last two columns without disturbing the tiles you have already placed.
So, working a row at a time, fill in all but the last two tiles of the row. Then move the *last* tile into the *Second last* spot. moving the second last tile into the place where it belongs will put that last tile where it belongs. If the second-last tile is already in place, you will nedd to move it out by moving any other tile in there.
This solves all but the last two rows. To solve them, again move the bottom leftmost tile to the second-bottom leftmost spot, and then put the second-bottom leftmost tile where it belongs. (exactly the same as solving the last two tiles of each row).
This solves all but the lats four spots (which will have three tiles). Just roll them around until they are right. If they can’t be made right, then the tile puzzle has an even/odd problem and is impossible.
I wonder if Tracy knows this? I don’t remember if this is what she did, but she DID solve it. Again, not as fast as the computer, but she did it.
This doesn’t seem to me like the sort of thing she would know, but then she’s always surprising me. I knew her for twenty years and more before I learned that she likes Patsy Cline.
One must always be careful with statistics, both in the size of the sample, and in how the numbers are being used.
The same is true of history, philosophy, and the rest of the social sciences–in which I include economics. Study of sources, historical background of development and effects of an idea, and biographies of major players are all required in your attempt to arrive at the truth, or at least a reasonably close approximation thereof.
Too many will decide on a source because it agrees with their preconceptions, and not look at alternative theories. Marxists read Marx, and ignore John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. Followers of Ayn Rand promote the merits of selfishness, and ignore Thomas Jefferson’s and Erich Fromm’s telling repudiations of selfishness as a moral system.
But the fear of illiteracy and innumeracy are both well founded, and must be dealt with through a broad and meaningful system of education that includes critical thinking.