Dancing on the Tails of the Bell Curve: Readings on the Joy and Power of Statistics. Copyright © 2013 by Richard Altschuler. For information contact the publisher, Gordian Knot Books, at 10390 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024, (424) 279-9118, or send an email to Richard.Altschuler@gmail.com.
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The essays and articles in this anthology are published with the permission of the authors or publications in which they originally appeared or are in the public domain. All rights reserved. Except as allowed for fair use, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Richard Altschuler & Associates, Inc.
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Table of Contents
Prologue: Resolution to Designate the Year 2013 as the “International Year of Statistics” by Senator Kay Hagan
Editor’s Introduction
The “Godliness” of Statistics: Florence Nightingale
The Magnificence of the Mean: Adolphe Quetelet
Probability—the Key to Reason and Religion: Simon Laplace and Thomas Bayes
On the “Charms” and Power of Statistics: Sir Francis Galton
How Statistics Helped Make Biology a Science: Karl Pearson and “The Scope of Biometrika”
Darwin: The Reluctant Mathematician by Julie Rehmeyer
Statistical View of the United States by D. B. Debow
On the Importance of Statistics to the United States Census and the World by President James A. Garfield
The First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (1884-1984) by Joseph P. Goldberg and William T. Moye
Statistics and Government by Wesley C. Mitchell
How Statistics Helped Desegregate America’s Public School System: Kenneth Clark and the U. S. Supreme Court
Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the U. S. by Luther Terry et al.
2013: The International Year of . . . Statistics by Marie Davidian
BLS 125th Anniversary: A Publication of the U. S. Department of Labor
The Necessity of Statistics in Highway Construction Management: The Case of Arkansas by Harold Rothbart
Could a Statistic on Redistricting Have a Game-Changing Effect on American Politics? by Thomas R. Belin
The Importance of Ag Estimates: A Publication of The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)
Data Inquiry and Analysis for Educational Reform by Howard H. Wade
Interview with Francesca Dominici Conducted by Kristi Birch
The Joy of Research Discovery with Statistics by Allan Geliebter
Smoking in Movies by Tim McAfee and Michael Tynan
Sabermetrics: Michael Lewis and Moneyball
Spotlight on Statistics: Fashion: A Publication of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
G8 Open Data Charter: Preamble by Governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States
Epilogue: The Joy of Realizing Basic Statistics Is a “Mean World” by Richard Altschuler
A Potpourri of Quotations about Statistics and Statisticians
Works Cited
To Jane
the joy and power in my life
who has always been my dancing partner
and forever will be
PROLOGUE
Introduction: The year 2013 was recognized as the “International Year of Statistics” by over 2,000 organizations worldwide that celebrated and honored the discipline of statistics. They included the U.S. Congress with the following Resolution, introduced by Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC), which details the many ways the science, art, and profession of statistics benefit individuals and nations.
113th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. RES. 150
TO DESIGNATE THE YEAR 2013 AS THE
“INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF STATISTICS”
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
May 21, 2013
Resolution
To designate the year 2013 as the ‘International Year of Statistics’.
Whereas more than 2,000 organizations worldwide have recognized 2013 as the International Year of Statistics, a global celebration and recognition of the contributions of statistical science to the well-being of humankind;
Whereas the science of statistics is vital to the improvement of human life because of the power of statistics to improve, enlighten, and understand;
Whereas statistics is the science of collecting, analyzing, and understanding data that permeates and bolsters all sciences;
Whereas statisticians contribute to the vitality and excellence of myriad aspects of United States society, including the economy, health care, security, commerce, education, and research;
Whereas rapidly increasing numbers of students in grades K through 16 and educators are recognizing the many benefits of statistical literacy as a collection of skills to intelligently cope with the requirements of citizenship, employment, and family;
Whereas statisticians contribute to smart and efficient government through the production of statistical data that informs on all aspects of our society, including population, labor, education, economy, transportation, health, energy, and crime;
Whereas the goals of the International Year of Statistics are to increase public awareness of the power and impact of statistics on all aspects of society, nurture statistics as a profession, especially among young people, and promote creativity and development in the sciences of probability and statistics; and
Whereas throughout the year, organizations in countries across the world will reach out to adults and children through symposia, conferences, demonstrations, workshops, contests, school activities, exhibitions, and other public events to increase awareness of the history and importance of statistics: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate —
(1) designates the year 2013 as the ‘International Year of Statistics’;
(2) supports the goals and ideals of the International Year of Statistics;
(3) recognizes the necessity of educating the public on the merits of the sciences, including statistics, and promoting interest in the sciences among the youth of the United States; and
(4) encourages the people of the United States to participate in the International Year of Statistics through participation in appropriate programs, activities, and ceremonies that call attention to the importance of statistics to the present and future well-being of the people of the United States.
Source
Hagan, Kay. (2013). Resolution to designate the year 2013 as the “International Year of Statistics.” Congressional Record, May 21, page S3662. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:S.RES.150.
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Editor’s Introduction
How I Became Motivated to Learn and Use Statistics
When I was an undergraduate, I had no interest in learning statistics. The same was true when I began graduate school. I had taken the required “stat” courses to that point, and struggled very hard to get a “B” in them. I cannot say I had much enjoyment throughout that struggle, for I had to put in many anxiety-filled hours of calculating values on a hand-held electronic calculator, learning what seemed to me like arcane concepts, and answering “word problems” that often seemed to have little or no relevance to the outside world, the “real world.”
But my attitude toward statistics changed when I met a person who inspired me to want to learn and use statistics. In fact, he did even more than this: He exuded joy when he stood before his blackboard, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, working out the solutions to statistical problems. When I was in his office alone with him, he would go through these different exercises, trying to instill in me the joy and power that statistics held for him, and their importance in the world at large.
As a result of his enthusiasm, seeing the pleasure he got from statistics, I suddenly found I had the desire to want to learn and use statistics. It was a good thing, too, because I had just been offered an assistantship to teach statistics to new students: Stat 101! And this was when I was in the master’s degree program, as a sociology major at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA., and had to struggle so hard to get through my stat courses with a “B.”
That professor, who “turned me on” to stat, was named Robert H. West, and he eventually became an Associate Dean at Temple University. I am certain that if I did not have a role model in “Bob” West, I never would have been motivated to really want to learn how to do statistics, understand the concepts, and use them in real life, in whatever ways I could for the good of myself and others. As it turned out, throughout my life I have personally been involved intimately with statistics in many ways—as a professor, research study consultant, tutor, data analyst, consumer, and concerned citizen.
Ever since those private meetings with Bob West, I have had the feeling in the back of my mind that it would be a great idea to assemble a book of readings that would convey the joy people experience from working with statistics and describe how statistics have influenced the nature and course of our society and world in important ways.
This book is the result of that impulse, and I hope it does for you what the late Bob West did for me, in his little office at Temple University, several decades ago. That is, I hope it inspires you to want to learn statistics, and motivates you to want to use them in your personal and professional life.
The Value of Motivation for Learning
As you undoubtedly know, before we can accomplish anything great or important in life we need proper motivation or inspiration. Whether we want to lose weight, advance our careers, be excellent parents—or learn statistics!—we can only go so far, get into what we are doing so deeply, and no more, without proper motivation or inspiration. What’s more, without proper motivation, our work can seem like a struggle, a great effort, an uphill climb all the way, usually with minimal success and a lot of complaining in the process. With proper motivation or inspiration, however, the hardest tasks can seem like “child’s play,” and even seem like fun a great deal of the time—because that is the power of wanting to do something rather than having to do something, of understanding why it is good or important to do something rather than feeling forced to do something without understanding why.
So I hope you find it within yourself to truly want to learn and use statistics, for the good of society and yourself. This book will hopefully spur you in that direction, and perhaps you will also find a mentor, as I did, to “turn you on” to the joy and power of statistics. There is every reason to want to do that today and nothing to stop you from being expert, or at least competent, in basic statistics, and achieving a level of statistical literacy you may have not thought possible.
People and Events You Will Learn about in this Book
From reading the Prologue—the Congressional Resolution to honor the discipline of statistics in the “International Year of Statistics: 2013”—I hope you have already seen the importance of statistics in our society. And I hope that your feeling is magnified as you continue to read the essays, articles, and other materials in this book about people and events that convey the joy and power of statistics.
As you’ll see, for example, Florence Nightingale felt as if she were experiencing “God” in the discipline of statistics, and she also used statistics in practical ways for the betterment of society; President James A. Garfield, from the time he was a congressman, saw the progress of all humankind in statistics, as well as the way to conduct the national census better than ever before; baseball manager Billy Beane, of Moneyball fame, transformed his sport using “sabermetics”—a type of statistical analysis applied to baseball that allowed him to assemble a winning team at a fraction of the cost of much richer franchises; and some of the originators of statistics and probability even thought they found the answers to truth and beauty in a statistic or statistical model: For Adolphe Quetelet it was the arithmetic mean, or average; for R.A. Fisher it was the normal or bell-shaped curve; and for Simon Laplace and Thomas Bayes it was probability itself.
As the above suggests, a way to view many of the major statistical innovations is as a special type of “philosophy” about the world, especially human beings, since the formulas, concepts, and models purport to explain how to understand and achieve rational thinking, justice in human relationships, and other behavioral outcomes that define the “Good Society.”
For the past several decades, a great source of joy for many statisticians has been the power of statistics to produce changes in specific laws, policies, and practices. For example, statistics have helped civil rights advocates win important court cases, such as Brown v. the Board of Education; enabled pharmaceutical companies to test the efficacy and safety of new medications, such as cholesterol-lowering statins; and allowed researchers to conduct studies that add to a sparse body of knowledge, resolve a controversy, bridge a gap, or create new knowledge in an important area of life.
By the “power” of statistics, in other words, I mean to indicate that statistics are commonly used today to determine or influence decisions that enable our society to function, live up to the cultural and societal ideals expressed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, preserve our safety, advance our health, and generally help us to live better lives. That is how essential statistics are to our society— and, in fact, to every modern society—and they are getting more so every day.
No Statistics Needed to Read this Book!
From the above, you may think you need knowledge of statistical formulas or concepts to understand the readings in this book—but the good news is that you do not! All you need is an initial willingness to learn about some of the men and women who have invented statistics, applied them for the betterment of society, or wrote about them to positively influence others—plus a few hours of your time. Once you gain the motivation or inspiration to want to learn and use statistics, then you’ll find that doing so will be a “piece of cake.” It was for me, and I know it will be for you too!
The Ubiquity of Statistics and How They are Used Today
As I hope you will appreciate from reading this book, statistics is one of the most important subjects you can learn today. Everywhere you turn, it seems, you hear or read about averages, probabilities, “links,” projections, rates, percentages, sampling errors—to name only a few of the commonly reported statistics.
Statistics, in effect, are ubiquitous in our society, to the point where they are even an integral part of our sports experience as fans, our weather reports, our retirement planning, our buying and selling behaviors—you name it, and statistics are probably involved in one way or another.
On television, the Internet, and radio, and in newspapers, magazines, and journals, statistics seem to be everywhere. They are used to lend credibility to arguments, describe phenomena, and make predictions. Graphs, charts, and tables are commonly used to visually depict “data”—the currency of our time for understanding the complex world in which we live.
“Big Data” has become the phrase of choice for journalists to describe the vast amount of bits and bytes residing on Fortune 500 servers around the world. And “data mining” has become the journalists’ correlative phrase to describe the activity of extracting meaning from the Big Data—so companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and others can understand who their users are and how to appeal to them to buy consumer goods, among other things of value to corporate giants.
The government, too, has jumped into the business of mining Big Data full scale, even to the extent of gathering phone and Internet data on every citizen, purportedly for national security concerns, hoping that the “national net” of surveillance will result in the capture of the relatively few terrorists who are hell bent on trying to harm America and its allies.
Because so many different types of organizations and individuals place so much value on data today, the field of “analytics” has emerged as a growing and valuable profession. Simply defined as “the science of analysis,” analytics involves the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data, mainly using knowledge of statistics and computers.
In sports, the science of “sabermetrics,” mentioned above, has recently emerged to analyze statistical data and apply the results to baseball reporting and management, especially in order to evaluate and compare the performance of individual players.
In big cities such as New York, mayors now assemble “Geek squads” to help them understand their populations and devise policies. The “tech-savvy” data analysts obtain and process huge amounts of information to identify a diverse array of phenomena— from stores selling bootleg cigarettes to areas where trees are down after a storm to buildings where fires are likely to occur because of code violations—and use it to improve the effectiveness of municipal operations.
Weather analysts depend on statistics to help them predict when and where hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other weather catastrophes are likely to strike next, and to help governmental authorities safeguard at-risk populations.
And just about every company in the world that wants to grow its market share uses statistical techniques to analyze markets and create business plans that will help them achieve their short-term and long-term goals.
In academic journals, business books, government reports, “watchdog” organization alerts—and many other types of research-based publications—hundreds of thousands of studies are published every year around the world that present findings in the form of statistics. Many of them contain complex techniques that only advanced students know how to choose, execute, and interpret accurately, such as multivariate regression or path analysis, while other researchers use the simplest statistics to analyze their data and report the findings, such as frequencies, percentages, means, medians, modes, and standard deviations.
Whatever the statistic reported in a study, however, the point is that educated people today must know and understand basic statistics to be able to keep up with knowledge in their fields and make use of the information in an intelligent way.
Whether in medicine, sports, social science, biology, physics, chemistry, business, psychology, economics, entertainment, media—just about any discipline or field of activity today—the same applies: Statistical literacy is essential for being a well-informed citizen of a democratic, advanced technological society such as America. It is as essential as reading and writing have traditionally been, and for the same reasons.
What You Can Do with Statistics: How You Will Benefit by Being Statistically Literate
With knowledge of statistics, you’ll be able to make better decisions about health and finance, to name only two important decision areas in life. You’ll be able to assess whether what a newscaster or journalist is telling you makes any sense, and therefore whether you should act on the information. If you are politically inclined, then statistics can help you understand the bills and laws that are proposed and passed or defeated, because many of them are based on statistical studiesquantitative data, in a phrase. In general, you’ll be able to understand life much better because so much of the information we receive these days, as mentioned, is statistical, especially measures such as percentages, averages, correlations, rates, and probabilities.
For all of these reasons and others, you should want to know basic statistics, including how to understand them, compute them, and apply them—both in general during everyday life and in specific situations, e.g., to prepare a household budget for the next month; understand the information on food and drug labels; evaluate a reporter’s financial predictions; conduct a study to determine the appeal of a new idea for a product or service; assess the results of a public opinion poll; decide whether to buy or sell a house; or to analyze your investment portfolio, among a multitude of other possibilities.
Another general benefit of knowing statistics is that you will be able to see the world through “statistical eyes.” This newfound “vision,” or ability to perceive, will not only provide you with information you would not otherwise have, but also allow you to understand the world in a way that may contradict the “expected reality” and interests of major institutions and organizations—such as pharmaceutical companies, “big box” retail chains, investment firms, governments, media outlets, and religious organizations—that want you to see the world their way, based on the data they choose to present to the public.
Using statistical thinking and know-how, you will also be able to evaluate findings reported in print or electronic media much better than ever before—such as averages, correlations, predictions, and rates of change—from the seemingly countless stream of studies and statistics that flood our newspapers, magazines, television screens, radios, and Internet sites on a regular basis, everyday.
As you can see from the above, because statistics are so integral to and essential for our lives, not