GO STATISTICS, YOUNG MAN

While riding along in my van the other day, I heard on my radio the voice of an "authority" on jobs. She discussed the job market generally. Naturally, wanting to be upbeat, as many have lost good jobs, she mentioned those that should be attractive in the upcoming years. The focus was on well-paying jobs of the hundred thousand dollar plus type. Surprisingly, the field of statistics was mentioned. According to this expert, the development of the internet and international commerce has engendered new requirements and problems. Such areas as cyber-sleuthing and the like were relatively new and complex. The general drift was that advances in the cyber-world were proceeding faster than the body of trained statistical experts available to properly measure, gauge and analyze them. Big government, big finance, big corporations, and big science were a-swim in big numbers rapidly replicating. Help!


Years ago I purchased a book about using statistics. I recall encountering a book with a title akin to "How To Prove Anything With Statistics." Indeed, the merit of statistics is entirely dependent on the person who does the statistical project and the person who pays s/he to do it. 'Tis said: He who pays the piper calls the tune." Therefore, without knowing the motivation and influences that were brought to bear on the statistician, one is likely to be a bit deceived.


Newspapers are not the only ones deep "into" material omissions.


Further, politicians, government officials and businessmen are not the only ones who like to accentuate the positive. This can lead to embarrassing public admissions and "corrections" later. Often, statistical data are flashed to provide evidence of an assertion. The general public expects a politician or public official to use such "hard" evidence. They are reassuring.


Frankly, inertia is as valid a law in public policy as it is in physics. Familiar speed and terrain make a policy trip seem safer - even sound. Let's not go off "half-cocked," being a statement that begs for the same policies, albeit refurbished. In national politics radical changes from within only occur at the point of a threatened national mortality.


Statistics is a tool wielded by opponents as they seek advantage in the eye of constituents. The president of the United States, Mr. Obama, has a distinct advantage here. Only when his policies seem failed to the public are the statistics of the opposition given any widespread reception.


Whether derivatives, "bank swaps," cyber-wars, or public policy, masters of numbers - statisticians - should prove to be in demand.






August 09, 2009