My OperaQualifying a statistic, a mystic art lost to the ages ...
Wednesday, May 18, 2011 10:28:31 AM
The media headlines are full of unqualified statistics, some - but not all - are qualified within the article body. They're designed to shock without giving true substance, and are impossible to use in meaningful comparison, but are perfect fuel for rhetoric (and selling the concept of government policy it seems).
For those of you out there who haven't encountered this before, a qualified argument requires all of the base values required to perform a true comparison (one that doesn't require assumptions). "I spend £100 a year on chips" is unqualified. "I spend 1% of my wages on chips" is unqualified. "I spend £100 of my £10,000 annual wage on chips" is qualified, and can be used for substantive comparison.
I've recently had a lot of unqualified statistics thrown at me as a reason for choosing a course of action, and I suggested to the people that they should go back and rethink their argument. They got very angry at this, stating that the research was sound. The research may have been sound, but I was questioning their presented statistics, not their research ... and such hostility ... sufficed to say they won't be getting my business.
For those of you out there who haven't encountered this before, a qualified argument requires all of the base values required to perform a true comparison (one that doesn't require assumptions). "I spend £100 a year on chips" is unqualified. "I spend 1% of my wages on chips" is unqualified. "I spend £100 of my £10,000 annual wage on chips" is qualified, and can be used for substantive comparison.
I've recently had a lot of unqualified statistics thrown at me as a reason for choosing a course of action, and I suggested to the people that they should go back and rethink their argument. They got very angry at this, stating that the research was sound. The research may have been sound, but I was questioning their presented statistics, not their research ... and such hostility ... sufficed to say they won't be getting my business.
