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.
It has created controversy, as witnessed by the replies it has
generated, therefore it is controversial.
> 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.
>
> NUMBER WORDS CORRECT IN VOCABULARY TEST
> POLITICAL PARTY AFFILIATION Mean N Std Dev Grouped Median Std. Error of Mean
> STRONG DEMOCRAT 5.83 263 2.22 5.81 .14
> NOT STR DEMOCRAT 6.02 365 2.01 6.00 .11
> IND,NEAR DEM 6.17 231 2.22 6.14 .15
> INDEPENDENT 5.71 284 2.08 5.72 .12
> IND,NEAR REP 6.41 163 1.99 6.47 .16
>
> NOT STR REPUBLICAN 6.05 337 1.98 6.08 .11
> STRONG REPUBLICAN 6.23 206 2.12 6.38 .15
> Total 6.03 1849 2.09
> 6.05 .05
>
> I apologize for the sloppy formatting, but I'm sure readers of this non-political
> newsgroup are numerate enough to figure out what is going on. Oh yes, P = .008.
This evidence hardly supports the contention that Bush voters are MORE
likely to be LITERATE. What it apparently supports (although I'm sure
readers of these NGs are sufficiently sophisticated to know the
differences between liars and statisticians ;-) ) is that they are
likely to be MORE LITERATE. BTW Iowa, which has the highest literacy
rate in the nation (the last I heard) voted slightly in favor of Gore.
In any case, the right to vote does not depend on literacy. Of course
I know Virginians are nostalgic for the old days when only the landed
gentry were allowed to vote. ;-)
Regards,
Russell Martin
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