The NY Times wrote:
> It is no longer possible to serve competently on some juries
>without more data skills than most college graduates have.
That's all right, there will always be one lawyer or the other who
doesn't *want* anybody to serve competently, and the competent juror
will be challenged. Having an above-average knowledge of anything
relevant (especially the law) has always been an easy route to
disqualification from jury duty.
At least, I'm assuming that that's why lawyers are automatically
disqualified in many jurisdictions. Only a cynic would assume that it's
just that the legal system has decided that if you make that kind of
money you're too important to have to take a week's unpaid leave; and
only an idealist would assume that members of a profession, 50% of whom
are at any moment trying to lead a jury to either acquit a guilty person
or convict an innocent one, would on that account not be let near the
jury box!
> If the trend continues nationwide, this newspaper could someday report
> that an apparently alarming cluster of cancer cases has arisen in an
> innocuous normal distribution, and students will be able to explain to
> their parents what that means.
Well, I'm darned if I can... "clusters" of cancer cases generally arise
either as spatial, temporal, or categorical data, and a normal
distribution would be unlikely to apply.
-Robert Dawson
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