"Neil W. Henry" wrote:
> Paul Thompson wrote, speaking of "caustic jerks":
>
> > Herman Rubin wrote:
> > >
> > > You may be making a Type 3 error. Remember, the null
> > > hypothesis is always false.
> > >
> > > Those who voted for Bush are more likely to be literate,
> >
> > This is the kind of offensive, stupid comment that belongs on political boards.
> >
> > Anyone who makes such comments without documentation, without evidence
> > is simply not a scientist. He simply is not even an educated person.
>
> Rubin's is not a very controversial statement. I would think that most readers
> of this newsgroup not only agree with it, but have access to documentation of it.
> Here's a table from the 1996 General Social Survey of American adults that shows
> that partisan Democrats score lower on a short (10 word) vocabulary test, on the
> average, than partisan Republicans.
It *is* a controversial statement for a few reasons:
i) he says what he says without backing it up with evidence. If evidence actually
exists, one should support one's arguments with it.
ii) the evidence you provide says nothing about democrat voters versus republican
voters in Volusia county. *Maybe* nationwide there is a mean literacy difference -
however, without knowing something about the demographics in the county itself, the
statement is without support. Are the majority of democrat voters in that county
factory workers, Spanish-speaking immigrants, retired professionals, university liberal
arts students?
iii) "Those who voted for Bush are more likely to be literate, and in particular aware
of what the punch card devices are doing" - these two things are quite different. I
know plenty of extremely "literate", qualified academics who would have much greater
difficulty fixing something basic on their car/in their house/etc. than much less
qualified, less "literate" manual workers.
Quite aside from anything else, I thought statisticians were meant to be extremely
careful with statistics. Being careful with statistics, of course, means not only doing
the math right, but also asking the right questions to begin with, being aware of the
assumptions one makes (both statistical and theoretical), and being careful with the
interpretations one draws. A bold categorical statement linking a lack of literacy with
voting problems fails on virtually all the above, and given its inflammatory potential
should at least have been better qualified/justified.
Tom Johnstone
Madison, WI
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