X is…

A big deal is being made about Obama deciding not to wear a pin.

OK, a big deal is being made about Obama deciding not to wear an American flag pin.

This is the article on MSNBC.

Here is a quote:

My attitude is that I’m less concerned about what you’re wearing on your lapel than what’s in your heart.  You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. You show your patriotism by being true to our values and ideals. That’s what we have to lead with is our values and our ideals.

Somebody took a step in the right direction.  Again, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying Obama is the guy for the next president.  That’s up to people far more important than I am, but it’s nice to see somebody with the kind of status that he has taking a stand.

Let’s discuss this now, because in a year from now it will be too late.  What the hell difference does it make whether or not he’s wearing an American flag lapel pin?  What does that indicate of his leadership style?

To me, it tells me that he’s not your typical doe what the popular majority wants candidate.

In the American right or wrong world, he’s taken a step in the right direction for me.

Popularity: 21% [?]

With the memetics discussion that has been going around the blog world, I have been able to more easily find blogs of interest to me.  Follow the meme trail.  My blogroll is growing!

An interesting post was put on No More Hornets.  The Exterminator made a post yesterday called Democrazy.  Fairly clever, but the rant was decent.  I don’t want to discuss all of it; I only wish to pull out one topic.

Math
Admitted: You can lie with statistics. But you can’t make two plus two equal five, regardless of what We the Innumerate People want. For instance: If the figures overwhelmingly show that abstinence education doesn’t work to stop teenage pregnancies, a voice vote — even led by the loudest, most pious throats in the country — won’t alter the calculations. Those girls are carrying real, countable babies. Get out your abacuses, fundies, you’ve got some adding to do.

I’ll throw out my two cents on this.  My domain is based on my math background.  I studied math and minored in statistics.  I thought once of pursuing post-grad studies in statistics, but I ran out of money.  A university education is expensive!

Studying math and statistics taught me a ton, and I worked to make it practical.  Never play the lottery was one thing I figured out.  Poor man’s tax is right.  We live in a world of gamblers, and I don’t think that most of the gamblers truly understand the odds.

Anyway, one thing that has always driven me nuts, and the above post clarifies this, is when people say statistics lie.  No.  Statistics are used to lie.  People use to dismiss my field of study by saying that it is a load of crap.  That statisticians can say whatever they want and it is true enough.  Not so.  Statistics are a tool and a form of measurement.
The key is education.  We dismiss math and statistics at a very young age in America.  That is why I used to get the responses I did.  If we make subjects boring, then people won’t care enough about it to educate themselves further.  Same thing we do with politics.

Every time I see survey results on television, I question it.  I look for the source (or who financed the survey), I look for sample error (the higher the error, the smaller the sample size, the less accurate the results), and any other indicators that the results may have been used to prove a point rather than answer a question.

A good statistician seeks answer to questions, and does not set out to prove a specific point.

We do a poor job in this country of getting fundamentals across.  People are taught how to do things, but not what to do with it.  There was a show that was on when I was a teenager.  Some movie where a woman goes back to her high school years through some time travel out of body thing.  I know, that story has been done hundreds of times.

What got me was when the woman turned girl was in Algebra class and raised her hand to let the teacher and class know that none of them will ever have a need for algebra again, because she knew from experience.  Somebody had to believe that in order to put that in a movie.  I figure many people believe it.  Algebra gets used daily by people; they just don’t realize it.  It’s fundamental to our existence on society.

Long winded I know.  It’s simple.  I ranted about the poor use of the English language the other day, and now I’m ranting about how people do not understand math.  Math is vital to us being responsible citizens and being able to make important choices on our own.  Statistics are only numbers.  Read them correctly and they can be the greatest tool we have.

Popularity: 12% [?]