Danged lies and statistics
Read a piece on Gabby Giffords on CNN and in the article, she says that the states with the most stringent gun control laws have the lowest levels of gun violence. A counter-intuitive result, I thought, given some famous places like Chicago and whatnot, so I checked out the link provided.
The link was to her own foundation, which applies an opaque process of data massage to give each state a "point value" based on a number of factors. Indeed, the states with the highest levels of gun control do show the lowest levels of gun violence but we really know nothing about the process, how the ranking system works, how point values are assigned, etc. What we have is an easily digestible and quotable statistic from a source that can be flung out in a debate and it becomes whack-a-mole to figure out how to respond and by that time, what matters is the content of the statistic, not its validity. It is pure propaganda. And it relies on the reader inferring causation from correlation. As I've said to my beginning Econ classes, I can show you a near perfect correlation between annual US GDP and cumulative snowfall in Kazakhstan but no one in their right mind would claim that one causes the other.
This bothers me because part of my graduate work was in the field of mathematical statistical design. Stuff like this makes me pull my hair out. It is garbage in terms of its descriptive value.
Probably an esoteric point but this sort of BS is why people just stop listening to so-called "experts" on issues. You can find any statistic you want on any subject and folks just don't have the energy to go track down and evaluate each claim, so they tune out. All you end up doing is preaching to the already converted.
