{"id":6828,"date":"2011-08-16T02:42:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T09:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=6828"},"modified":"2011-08-16T02:42:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T09:42:54","slug":"a-bassackwards-look-at-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/16\/a-bassackwards-look-at-statistics\/","title":{"rendered":"A bassackwards look at statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lately there’ve been a lot of articles like this one<\/a> compiling various polls that show that Americans are fed up, ticked off, and righteously furious.<\/p>\n

You know the sort I mean: “A new Rasmussen survey has found that 85 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress ‘are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping other people'”; “A recent Reuters\/Ipsos poll discovered that 73 percent of the American people believe that the nation is ‘on the wrong track'”; “A recent poll taken by Rasmussen found that 68 percent of Americans believe that we are actually in a recession right now.” (All from the link above.)<\/p>\n

That’s supposed to show how shockingly cynical (or discouraged or angry) we’ve become. And … yeah, they’ve got a point.<\/p>\n

But don’t you always wonder the same thing I do? Who the blankety-blank are the 15 percent who believe congressthings aren’t<\/i> strictly out for their own interests? And can 27 percent of Americans (or for that matter Canadians or Frenchmen or Lower Slobovians) possibly believe the U.S. is on the right<\/i> track? And is it really even remotely conceivable in this universe or any other that there are 32 percent who are so media-sodden and blinded by cooked gov-stats that they believe we’re not<\/i> in a recession?<\/p>\n

Well, of course, pollsters are only counting the folks who accept phone calls from pollsters. So naturally the stats they come up with are absurdly trusting.<\/p>\n

Or at least I hope that’s the case. Because if those stats are representative of people’s real state of mind, you’d have to be very nervous around those delusional 15, 27, or 32 percenters. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately there’ve been a lot of articles like this one compiling various polls that show that Americans are fed up, ticked off, and righteously furious. You know the sort I mean: “A new Rasmussen survey has found that 85 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress ‘are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping other people’”; “A recent Reuters\/Ipsos poll discovered that 73 percent of the American people believe that the nation is ‘on the wrong track’”; “A recent poll taken by Rasmussen found that 68 percent of Americans believe that we are actually in a…<\/p>\n

Continue readingA bassackwards look at statistics<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-mind-and-spirit","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}