The fat of the land...

[Karmashock]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/02/19/070219190755.ymle6ljl.html

Now, I think you all know how little respect I have for these kinds of studies so I'm hardly convinced by anything I'm reading here... but it would be interesting to figure out what 10 percent jobless households means... does that for example include retired people... or what about college students... if it doesn't include either then that specifically might be something that people in effected countries should look at.

[Apocalypse]

I would guess at it not including those. It would only be compiled of those who are on jobless benefit.

[Karmashock]

I've found statistics that didn't take such things into consideration.


For example, there was a study in the Washington Post recently that "for the first time in American history the majority of women are NOT married".



How did they come to that conclusion? Think of the most shameless way you could possibly say that and you'd probably be close to the truth.



















Ready?



Their numbers were from age 15 and up. A fact they didn't mention until the 23 paragraph... which many people would not have gotten to considering that most people tend to read the headline followed by the first few paragraphs there after.

When called on this blatant distortion and abuse of "statistics" they CLAIMED that the numbers wouldn't be effected whether 15-18 year olds were included or not. This obvious lie was quickly defined when their numbers were run again by a separate agency and found that contrary to their claims and to no great surprise when not counting 15-18 year olds in the statistics the majority of American women are in fact married. Needless to say the author of that article and company are getting urinated upon by anyone that feels like venting their liver at this point as no one feels much like defending them. But also not surprisingly they've changed their story about 5 times since then and maintain in each version of the truth that they did nothing wrong.





Which is only to demonstrate that I have very little faith in statistics unless I know WHO took them. Because that's all the statistics are worth... if it some UN panel then my respect for those people is roughly zero when it comes to these things. They've show a consistent flexibility with truth for too long. I can't speak to the EU as I have no experience with their statistics.

[Apocalypse]

Which is only to demonstrate that I have very little faith in statistics unless I know WHO took them. Because that's all the statistics are worth... if it some UN panel then my respect for those people is roughly zero when it comes to these things. They've show a consistent flexibility with truth for too long. I can't speak to the EU as I have no experience with their statistics.

Yea, Ditto, I have no knowledge of US goverment so won't comment on that but the EU are very fond of their statistics and very often those statistics are either made up or not based on anything even remotely realistic.

[Karmashock]

If you want to know a little something about US statistics:
US statistics are very very raw and very federalized... that is to say they tend to take them like a machine would and an entirely different group of people is responsible for different types of statistics. The Census department collects a retarded amount of information and then doesn't do anything with it really. The type of information they take is population, marriage status, household income, age, etc... this is because the two things their information is used for is determining how many seats in the House of Reps any given state should have at the ten year re-adjustments... and adding congress in determining how much they can milk taxpayers.

The IRS takes it's own statistics and they involve things such as audits, amount of money given to charity (thus exempt from taxation), etc.

The FBI takes national crime statistics. Their figures are fairly reliable, but you have to take into consideration that the vast majority of crime is handled and reported by state and city entities that are not directly affiliated with the FBI... thus given states might over, under, or not report statistics... or might report them based on their own private criteria that has nothing to do with anyone else... and wasn't disclosed.

The CDC takes a great deal of the national health statistics. They however have a bias towards major health problems as again no one calls on them unless city and state facilities might be overwhelmed... which only happens in the case of an outbreak or something.


Those are just a few examples. The primary thing to understand when dealing with ANYTHING in the US is that the US is NOT a unitary government unlike nearly every country in Europe. The governmental structure is very broken up and most entities have near total autonomy in their given jurisdiction... that is to say so long as they don't mess with anyone else no one will tell them what to do. While this allows our agencies to work very efficiently and with a great degree of diversity... it also makes things harder to integrate on a national level.


On the whole US statistics are very reliable as the raw numbers are generally easy to obtain in a RAW form. However, it is very very common for them to be interpreted by third parties or various political entities (pressure groups, special interests, people running for various elections, or various individuals with a poor understanding of statistics no/poor editorial oversight and easy access to publishing systems). Basically, whenever I hear about some 'study' the US the first thing I look to is WHO did it and where the information came from. If the people doing the study were a highly political organization then I have to check the raw numbers. If the raw numbers were taken by an unreliable group then the whole study is of limited value until it can be verified by a better source.