Thursday, June 10, 2010
Statistics is a wonderful thing. So many academics place their research on stats because numbers cannot be wrong! If an artist would rather show you a painting and let it talk for itself, than to write you an article describing an painting, then many researchers would rather show you number and let the numbers do the talking.
I was watching a documentary on sharks last night, and the recurring message? Sharks bite because their are curious, they are inquisitive, they won't eat you because you're not on their menu. You are more likely to be killed my lightning, or attacked by a dog, before you are attacked by a shark.
I do not disagree with researchers that sharks are inquisitive, but I think they are missing the point! Then problem isn't being eaten by sharks (eaten in the sense that you're actually disgested), the problem is that the shark bites, and that hurts! If you know the odds of being struck by lightning are low, then why not take a walk in an open field during a thunderstorm? And the numbers may show that dogs are more likely to attack you, but how many people can control a dog by command? And for every story on a dog attack, how many stories are there of friendly dogs?!
Statistics is a quantitative measure, not a qualitative one. When people raise concerns about quality, how can you answer them with quantitative measures? Its like going to a showroom and while you're inspecting the car trying to determine its quality, the salesman is rambling off about selling 200,000 of a particular model, or some car model being number 1 in some tests.
Dan
10:06 am
