This is started as a result of an off-topic discussion in the Black and White Thread, where we started debating whether statistics or personal experience was more important in arriving at generalized conclusions. And the end result is the merging with a similar thread started by Nakia. :)

Nakia summed up one side of the argument nicely with this post:

A long life does not automatically bring wisdom or for that matter great experience. Education does not automatically bring wisdom or experience. What is printed in books is not necessarily true. Logic can be based on a false premise. Statistics are great if I want to set up a business or have an intellectual, formal debate.

Having said the above I admit that quoting statistics to me will probably cause my mind to go blank and shut down or just annoy me My personal experiences have a large influence on my personal choices including for whom and what I vote.

Experience may not be the best teacher but it is the one we tend most to heed. Since this is primarily a game board I will use this example: Statistics prove that game X is played by more people than game Y. So based on statistics I should run out and buy game X. But do I? No. I check what others think of the game. I ask here or in FAI what people think of the game. I base my decision on what game to buy based on my experiences and the experiences of those who like the same type of games that I like. Sure it isn't 100% accurate but it works for me.

Both statistics and experience have their place and are valuable but no one is going to get me like cauliflower just because 7 out of 10 people like it.

I responded with:
The only problem with that approach is that statistics are the only valid basis for making decisions which are actually reflective of reality. For example, I have an aunt who was bitten by a dog when she was a child, and so she is terrified of dogs. Her experience tells her that dogs are dangerous. So if she were to rely solely on her experience, she would push for banning dogs as pets. And I doubt that most people would agree with that.

Spelly answered with:
But that's where our intellect plays a role. Her experience may tell her that a certain breed of dog is dangerous -- but she may not leap to the idea that all dogs are dangerous. I think, we as humans, blend experience with intellect and common sense -- that's what makes us who we are. There is certainly a place for facts -- but we are not robots or machines -- opinion and perception are a very real part of all of us.

So – how important is personal experience in trying to come to general conclusions? Should personal experience outweigh statistics? And are their other factors which should be taken into account? And where does it all fit in when developing public policy?

The floor is open…

This is a spin off of Black vs White thread which is a spin off of another thread. Which has now been combined with Splunge's thread. Hurray for the new Board.

by Splunge The only problem with that approach is that statistics are the only valid basis for making decisions which are actually reflective of reality.

I disagree. Statistics are helpful in many cases but certainly not 'the only valid basis for making decisions'. Fact, in my experience I do not know anyone who makes a day-to-day decision based on statistics. They may make financial decisions based on statistics but find me the person who got married (or divorced) based on statistics. Even simpler, find someone who makes friends based on statistics.

We are statistics. Law makers and businesses use statistics. Your normal average human being uses emotions and experiences to make decisions. And as Spellbound says I hope they use common sense and a variety of experiences including those of others. Just as I do when I buy a game. At least I try to.

1 + 1 = 10. Just a cold figure. Means nul until I give it meaning.

Now that is my :2c: and you ain't going to change me mind. :p

I agree with you, using crude statistical and arithmetics for real life situation isn't an option for me. For instance Given the choice would you save one or a thousand person from a certain death. A pure arithmetics reasoning would choose the thousand, however I couldn't choose either of these. I give human life to much value to considers even a single lost in humans soul.

Edit; minor grammatical errors.

But that's where our intellect plays a role. Her experience may tell her that a certain breed of dog is dangerous -- but she may not leap to the idea that all dogs are dangerous.As I mentioned in the other thread, this kind of "logic" completely misses the point. A persons dealings with a group of people cannot be extrapolated against a larger whole unless he's dealt with a significant statistical sample. A person who's only dealt with 1,000 black people in his life is not qualified to make generalizations about black people from his experience with them. Not only are his experiences going to be clouded by his own point of view and preconceived notions but there are also over 41 million black people in this country. You can't make an extrapolation about all blacks in the US from your (brief) dealings with 1,000 of them from a single region of the country. It doesn't work that way.

And yet, statistically speaking, 1,000 people is probably a statistically-valid sample, provided it's a random sample. Of course, as you've implied, a sample drawn from personal experience is unlikely to be "random".

Personal experience is good, so long as you're a wise enough person to interpret what happens to you properly, and come to the right conclusions. Unfortunately, most people in this world are dumbasses, and require people with more brain to tell them how they should react to stuff. We're doctored to a certain reaction-procedure from a young age by our surroundings. Unfortunately, statistics can be used to prove or disprove anything, and are often unreliable in giving a correct answer. I'd say it's mainly a mix of both. This fence is well comfortable.

Ahem:

In Nakia's thread, please. :)

Moderators - please close this thread down.

Edit - Or merging the threads is even better. :)

Drew --

Just because a golden retriever bites someone doesn't mean that golden retrievers are dangerous. Just because a dog on a chain bites someone doesn't mean that dogs on chains are dangerous.

Let's extrapolate this to pit bulls. You're correct if one person is bitten by a pit bull, it doesn't mean that the breed is dangerous. However, If one person meets another person that's experienced that, and then another and then another.....and then reads news articles on it, that perception will surely change. Does it mean every pit bull is dangerous? Of course not. Does it mean that perhaps they have a higher tendency towards biting? I'd say quite probably. People's opinions are rarely based on one experience or event. As you age in life, it's compiled over a variety of experiences, conversations, etc., which ultimately comprises opinion.

As far as blacks abusing welfare -- if you had read my previous posts in the other thread, I made mention that whites do the same. However, in my experience (which helps to form my opinion), I have met many who have abused the system and willingly joked about it. If you think that doesn't have an effect on forming a person's opinion on something, then you are deluded. We are made up of a blend of fact and experience -- to suggest that experience is irrelevant is absurd.

Ok, threads merged... you'll need to do some link clean-up. ;)

Did I mention that I love the new boards? :D

Edit: If you want to combine several of your posts into one, put all the text into one and blank the one you want to have deleted.

And yet, statistically speaking, 1,000 people is probably a statistically-valid sample, provided it's a random sample. Of course, as you've implied, a sample drawn from personal experience is unlikely to be "random".I meant to imply even more than that. When making an implication about blacks and their propensity to abuse welfare, just looking at 1,000 black people isn't good enough. First of all, at least 950 of them (assuming you are only drawing from a state like Louisiana, where an abnormally large percentage of its people get welfare), and probably more, are not on welfare, have never been on welfare, and probably never will. So, you're actually looking at 50 people or less. If you find out that 5 of them (10%) are abusing welfare, you've found one or two families at most (since about 80% of welfare recipients are actually children). This is, at best, a statistical anomaly.

@Spellbound: the experiences of hundreds, or even thousands, of racists who refuse to acknowledge the mountains of empirical data (that I'd be happy to link you to) which countermands their (biased) experiences are irrelevant. Do you work for DHS? Do you regularly deal with blacks who abuse welfare all over the country, or just in your neck of the woods? How many black families who abuse welfare have you actually met? Two? Three? Five? Such a small sample amounts to nothing that can be extrapolated across a grand scale....which is why you can't make broad generalizations from your own personal experiences.

Man -- you refuse to see the point. I deal with empirical data daily -- and teach statistics for christ sakes. There is no one here who understands more the value of stats AND how they can be twisted to suit a researcher's whim. :sigh: What I'm trying to suggest to you is that you undervalue experience, or rather put NO VALUE on experience and opinion. I recognize the needs for facts, but also recognized that opinions garnered from experiences over many years have value as well.

It is no secret that blacks are known for abusing the welfare system and milking it for all it's worth. I would imagine some poor whites share in that action, but it is the blacks that are particularly known for it. I didn't say that. You did. You've provided no figures to defend this statement, either. You said you looked, but obviously haven't found anything. Has it occurred to you that the reason for that, perhaps, is that it's a stereotype with no basis in actual reality?

Thank you, Tal.

Hokay, Statistics: A lot of statistics are based on polls. Polls are based on some form of interview with human beings who answer those poll questions honestly or dishonestly from personal experience. I get a phone call, "We are doing an interview to find if you prefer cauliflower to broccoli or carrots and do you like your cauliflower with or without cheese? etc. My response which I can't print here boils down to "I hate cauliflower." Usually my response to pollsters is "Sorry, too busy, can't talk now."

I have had it explained to me elsewhere that these polls of a few hundred are valid. Hokay, I'll have to take your word for that. Which does not mean I really believe you. Ha!

Now I have lived a long and eventful life. I have lived in KY, OH, AK, CA, Fl, NY, NJ, AZ, WI and I may have forgotten one or two but those are the main ones. The point of this is I have had a chance to randomly meet a lot of different people. Blacks, whites, Indians..sorry, Native Americans, orientals, arabs, Turks, and further more the Internet has broadened my horizons. I have now 'met' folks who actually live in different countries. I have lived in Oneida where the former Oneida Reservation once was. I have lived on a Navajo Reservation.

Based on this I hereby official and formally declare myself a walking poll and quite capable of forming my own strongly held opinions which you may be able to change by carefully reasoned arguements but never, ever, by quoting statistics at me unless we are discussing whether or not I should invest in something.

By now it should be obvious what I consider the most important. Do I really need to spell it out for you? Experience, all kinds of experience, including family, friends, enemies, schools, work, travel, reading, TV, Internet. This is what life is all about not that 7 out of 10 people like that bland, tasteless, white vegie cauliflower.

Drew -- I've given you my rationale for that statement and the fact that I don't have hours to spend researching this. Yet you refuse to acknowledge it and keep posting the same statement of mine over and over. Yes I said that.....and a whole lot more in explanation, but you refuse to acknowledge that either. No comment on the pit bull example? I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on this, so I just have one suggestion -- be careful with your data.....and interpreting it.

Nakia, that was very well done. :) Now for my rebuttal. :p

I’ll give you credit for having experienced life in many different areas in the US. However (and I’m not at all saying that this applies to you), early experiences can very easily form the basis for interpretation of later experiences. Take my dog analogy, for example – my aunt, in her adult years, worries about the possibility that an unfamiliar non-threatening dog she encounters might turn on her unprovoked. I, on the other hand, am likely to go to that dog, offer him/her my hand to sniff, and then proceed to pet it (assuming the sniffing part didn’t cause it to go for my jugular). So the fact that someone has lived in many places doesn’t necessarily mean that person has a realistic or unbiased view on things. (Again, I'm not saying your own observations aren't valid or representative.)

And yay for Tal!

Personal experience can make you come to the most odd conclusions and makes you generalize something fierce. You can base my your own personal opinion on personal experience, you cannot base nationwide policies on the same. Especially since our personal experiences are coloured by our previous personal experiences so we are prone to strengthen old prejudices instead of breaking them.

To please Spellbound I am going to adress the pitbull example, I have personally met quite a few very nice pitbulls while I have a longlasting loathing and I wouldnt call it fear but waryness of rottweilers going back to my childhood. Dogs are a very bad example for this as they are nothing but mirrors of their owners, what you could say if you want to generalize and have a bit more flesh on your bones is that many of the people who own pitbulls shouldnt be allowed to own dogs period. If the pitbulls were made illegal those ant hung men and insecure women would go find another breed of dog to give a bad reputation.

I personally have a huge slew of personal opinions based on personal experiences that I wouldnt for the life of me see shared by society as I know on an intellectual level that to do so would be wrong. Even if almost every romani I have encountered have been a thief and/or a drugdealer I wouldnt want them rounded up for the public good.

all blacks in the US from your (brief) dealings with 1,000 of them from a single region of the country. by Drew Bold added by me.

If you read Spellbounds posts carefully you will reallize that she has lived in many parts of the country and although she is by no means as old as I am she does have life experience to back up her statements.

Statistics is not the final word. It is a tool invented by human beings and it can be used or misused. Experience covers a broad range of things and varies from individual to individual. So we put these experiences together and come up with a hash we call a poll.

1000 blacks are interviewed or in some way officially counted. Of these blacks 50 or 5% are on welfare. Of these 50, 5% or 2.5 blacks abuse the system. Now statistics uses this information to state that of the 42 million blacks in the USA 2,100,000 are on welfare, of this 2,100,000 5% abuse the system. so 105,000 blacks abuse the system.
Please note that these are made up figures based on Drew's post and are in no way intended to factual figures but merely an example of how I understand statistics to work.

Spell, since I have never taught and in fact never even took a full course in statistics please correct me if I am wrong.

The issue in question with that, Nakia, is if in fact the 1,000 individuals are representative of the population. That's dependent on a couple of things -- what parameter you're measuring, what confidence level you want (i.e. if you have 98% confidence level, you're stating that if you repeatedly drew samples of size 1,000 from the 42 million black population of the US, 98% of the values of the sample mean would be such that the true population mean would fall in that established confidence interval) and the level of error you're willing to live with. Sampling isn't an easy thing and has everything to do with the validity of the results. Incorrect sampling and the whole study is trashed.

Experience covers a broad range of things and varies from individual to individual. So we put these experiences together and come up with a hash we call a poll.

I quite like that, actually. Good point.

But there is a difference between statistics based on polls, and statistics based on more "empirical" evidence, such as IRS data or the like.

As an aside, I really shouldn't be involved in this right now (which is why my replies are kinda short). I'm at work on a Saturday, and it's not because I have to be at work in order to post on SP.

And Tal, your deletion thing doesn't work. I can't edit a post unless the edited post has at least 5 characters.

I think it can be summed up in what my statistics teacher at the university* always said, "Statistics is an aid, not a substitute for common sense." There are plenty of ways to misuse statistics.

* Please note: I am not a statistician; I had to take a small course in Statistics to support my studies in Computing and Physics.

To judge whether a statistical source is trustworthy, you have to consider some things: Who compiled the data? Why was the data compiled? Is the sampling correct, and is it large enough? For example, if the Ku Klux Klan did a survey that "proved" that blacks are less intelligent than whites, we would probably all be rather sceptical.

To return to the dog example, it has been statistically proven that more people in Denmark are bitten by Golden Retrievers than by Pitbulls. This doesn't mean that Golden Retriever is a dangerous breed of dog; it means that there are more retrievers than Pitbulls in Denmark. The data cannot be used without some common sense.

But it has also been proven that more people are bitten by Golden Retrievers than by German Sheepdogs, even when adjusting the data for the number of retrievers and sheepdogs. This would surprise many who believe that Golden Retriever is a very safe breed, while many think that German Sheepdogs are fierce. In this case, we can certainly learn something from a statistical source.

The problem, here, is that no one has actually brought up any verifiable evidence of welfare abuse. In a discussion of how more black people abuse welfare, you would think this would be the first thing cited to defend such a specious argument. In fact, without any verifiable evidence, than what you have is nothing more than opinion that isn't based on actual data. To argue that more blacks abuse welfare, you create the following burden for yourself:

First, you have to come up with a plausible definition of welfare abuse that, for the sake of discussion, everyone can agree on. This is important because there are a lot of folks out there arguing that receiving any benefits at all constitutes abuse of the system. Then, you must determine what percentage of welfare recipients are black, white, latino, etc.

After getting those percentages straight, you must then subdivide that number into households (or some similar measure), since around 80% of all welfare recipients are children...and children are obviously not the ones abusing welfare. After that, it's time to actually look at the percentage of blacks, whites, latinos, etc who are abusing welfare and see how they compare to each other. Since all this data is readily available from the government, it's just a simple matter of looking it up from there.

If you aren't willing or able to meet the burden you've set for yourself in proving such an argument, then you shouldn't be making it.

Now, I know we all love our anecdotes, but how, pray tell, does one determine whether or not a household is abusing welfare without taking a look at their finances? You don't. You can't. Unless someone has either a) been arrested for bilking the system (it happens from time to time) or b) actually admits to defrauding or otherwise abusing it, there is no way to determine, short of guesswork-making a judgment without any of the actual facts-whether or not a family is abusing welfare. In making such a half-cocked judgment without all the facts, prejudice and other pre-concieved notions automatically comes into play.

So – how important is personal experience in trying to come to general conclusions? Should personal experience outweigh statistics? And are their other factors which should be taken into account? And where does it all fit in when developing public policy?

The problem with statistics is that they can be subjective too, often faulty. Paradoxically, it's life experience which helps you know which research is credible and which is bogus. You can obviously conduct some analysis, but there's always a personal judgement involved and experience comes into play at that point. Now, experience can be misinterpreted and misunderstood by the "owner", sure, and it's largely subjective because of its nature, so there's always trouble verifying it. Have to use a measure of common sense. ;)

If you aren't willing or able to meet the burden you've set for yourself in proving such an argument, then you shouldn't be making it.

You are the one who is attaching the burden here, no one else. I'm not out to prove anything -- just sharing my opinions. And who are you to say who should put forth his OPINIONS or not? Since when do you hold court here in this forum and judge for someone or advise someone that their opinion isn't worthy to be typed here? FFS, man, get a grip. The fact that you find my opinion irrelevant is actually beginning to seem like a relief to me, an association that I'm thankful for.

So you're saying you were posting your opinion with no desire to convince or sway other people? OK. That's...a bit weird, but OK. Sorry for challenging your world view by suggesting that opinions of other races should be based on verifiable fact instead of unverifiable anecdotes with no hard data to back them up. I guess I'm just eccentric.

Because we all know that 'statistics' are accurate, objective and not open to interpretation, whereas anecdotal evidence and personal experience are the exact opposite. :rolleyes: Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. And in the absence of statistical data, we must rely on personal experiences to formulate opinions. One must be very careful when making inferences from personal experiences, and ensure that one does not 'over-extrapolate'. But to dismiss such experiences outright for not being 'objective' data is absurd.

And wouldn't research into black welfare fraud be politically incorrect? I mean, doesn't the mere hypothesis of the research project have implications of racism? The bleeding heart liberals would never allow such research, no doubt because it would demonstrate that in a significant number of cases, Affirmative Action and handouts fail dismally in achieving equality between blacks and whites.

Drew:
Sorry for challenging your world view by suggesting that opinions of other races should be based on verifiable fact instead of unverifiable anecdotes


Interesting.

Do you believe that all races are equal, Drew?

Firstly to quickly and simply address Drew's post above this one. We are not addressing Welfare Abuse in this thread that is a different thread.

Now on to my rebuttal of Splunge's rebuttal.

Nakia, that was very well done. Now for my rebuttal.

I’ll give you credit for having experienced life in many different areas in the US. However (and I’m not at all saying that this applies to you), early experiences can very easily form the basis for interpretation of later experiences. Take my dog analogy, for example – my aunt, in her adult years, worries about the possibility that an unfamiliar non-threatening dog she encounters might turn on her unprovoked. I, on the other hand, am likely to go to that dog, offer him/her my hand to sniff, and then proceed to pet it (assuming the sniffing part didn’t cause it to go for my jugular). So the fact that someone has lived in many places doesn’t necessarily mean that person has a realistic or unbiased view on things. (Again, I'm not saying your own observations aren't valid or representative.)

I have sat and thought hard about early experiences. My early experiences? A fascinating, unusual, unique, aggravating family that created a person that can mystify people. "Are you from England, Italy, the near East?" A grandmother who was college educated, editor of the Women's page of a large city newspaper and a member of the WAACs. Several artists in the family and I am a 'hillbilly' to boot. :lol: I envied nice normal families when I was a child but now I look back with nostalgia and gratitude. Blessed was I though I ranted and raved like many a 'normal' child.

Biased? Who me? Of course I am. I am a human being. I learned from my early experience that there is a great big wonderful world out there and you can't experience it by hidding behind figures. You can only get to know it by living it, experiencing it, meeting people, talking to them, listening to them. I expand my knowledge by participating on these boards, by reading what others have posted and thinking about what they say. Even if I disagree with someone it makes me think, makes me question my own opinions and refine them.

Experience, common sense and statistics all have their proper place. They are tools we use to function in this world and how well we use oft times decides how well we relate to the rest of the world.

spellbound, look at the description of drew under his name. he is all that and more. you could provide him with signed, notarized, Uncontrovertible proof and he would still deny it. i've learned not to argue with him & just ignore anything he posts.

Most of our society revolves around perception. Perception is intrinsically intertwined with opinion. I don't know of any people who check the stats first, to determine how they will feel about a subject -- until now. If you really believe what you're saying, then you must have a difficult time of it dealing with peers.

I never said the things you are attributing to me.

Yes, yes, you form an initial opinion based on your experiences--and then you go investigate to see whether or not that opinion is valid. At least, you investigate if you actually care about the topic.

Do you believe that all races are equal, Drew?Absolutely. No one has ever found a correlation between potential and race. Being white doesn't automatically make you smarter. Being black doesn't make you dance better. Being Latino doesn't make you more gregarious. Being Asian doesn't make you quieter. These are functions of culture (and cultural priorities), not genetics. But this is off topic.

And wouldn't research into black welfare fraud be politically incorrect? I mean, doesn't the mere hypothesis of the research project have implications of racism?Research of welfare fraud already exists. The FLDS church (which is in no way connected to the modern LDS church), the most egregious offenders by far, are almost entirely white....but, as Nakia pointed out to me, this is off topic in this thread.

Drew:

Absolutely.


Do you have any data, along with a statistical analysis, to support your opinion that all races are equal? Or is it merely an assumption based on the egalitarian axiom?


No one has ever found a correlation between potential and race.


1. 'Absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence'

2. Can you you provide any studies which conclusively demonstrate that there is no correlation between potential and race? I'm looking for data, not anecdotal evidence and 'feel good' philosophy.

Can you you provide any studies which conclusively demonstrate that there is no correlation between potential and race? I'm looking for data, not anecdotal evidence and 'feel good' philosophy.

Actually, yes, I can. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/02/23/MN94378.DTL&type=special)

Here's another. (http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/special/pseudoscience-race.html#dishonest%20claim)

Those articles are personal opinion. They fail to present any statistical data which conclusively demonstrates that 'all races are equal'.

However, if you genuinely feel that the concept of 'race' is ambiguous and worthless, would you argue that populations of varying biogeographical descent are equal?

Those articles are personal opinion. They fail to present any statistical data which conclusively demonstrates that 'all races are equal'.Sure. The conclusions of these social scientists, however, are based on exactly that type of data. If you want to see the primary data and pore over their hours of research, go look for it yourself. I'm not going to waste my time arguing about something this ridiculous.

Please, this thread is not about race vs race it is about experience vs statistics. Try to stay somewhat on topic. It is very easy to start a new thread. Splunge and I did it almost simultaneously. :D


[Discussions about race can and should go: Here (http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?p=617335#post617335) /dmc]

Let us get back to the original topic.

I quite like that, actually. Good point.

But there is a difference between statistics based on polls, and statistics based on more "empirical" evidence, such as IRS data or the like.
(deleted non relevant material)



I agree with this post but waking up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a thought popped into my mind.

Statistics prove that racial prejudice exists in the USA. However, how many people look at these statistics and are upset by them? Oh, we may say to ourselves "That is terrible, something should be done about it." But do we do anything? However, if someone I personally know is a victim of stereotyping then I react and will try do whatever I can. It may be a simple protest or it may take a stronger form. The Equal Rights Movement of the Sixties was born from personal experience not from statistics. So which has the greater impact on our lives, personal experience or statistics?

On the other hand statistics show that most wives are NOT abused by their husbands. Does this mean we should ignore the cases where wives ARE abused by their husbands?

Well, after giving this some more thought, I'll say this - personal experience is important for individuals in heir day to day lives (provided that that experience is not just an isolated event), but when making public policy, you better have the stats to back you up.

:D Once more I agree with Splunge. Lots and lots of verifiable facts and figures are needed before setting public policy. Back to personal experience it is also a good idea to check your experiences against others' and be willing to listen to what they have to say. Experience includes all kinds of things, including but not limited to: reading, watching TV, meeting people, playing, working and on and on.

It is how we react to these experiences and how open we are to new and different ones that decides how well we relate realistically to the world around us.

I think people here are really missing the point. We have both (and more) and use them for a reason. Experience is wonderfully detailed and can be used for an in-depth, qualitative analysis quite easily, but it is limited. Even in the most 'well-lived' life, you'll never experience more than a tiny fraction of the possibilities. Experience is like little snapshots of the relevant information, but very detailed snapshots. Statistics, on the other hand, can cover wide and varying topics relatively easily, but do so by boiling down the experiences of large numbers of people (and empirical data) and forming a simplified explanation.

As has been used before, lets look at the videogames X and Y. 80% of people play game X, while only 40% play Y (there are 20% who play both). Reading this, you think 'Yeah, but will I like game X, I mean, its 50 dang bucks!' Immediately, you go looking for personal experiences with game X, who liked it and why, how it plays, how it looks, etc. What about game Y? Well, if you decide you don't like the look of game X, then you'll probably look into game Y, but game X got priority just because of statistics. The end decision was based on experiences, but the order of priority came from the more vague statistics.

Again, look at diseases. You can say that more people die every year from, lets say, the flu, than any other disease in the world (or maybe just your nation, that's ok, too). Does that mean we should stop our research on AIDS or cancer until we have the flu wiped out? No, becuase experience tells us that the flu is little more than an annoyance for most of humanity, and the majority of those it does kill, it only kills because they have other problems as well. Aids can kill anyone, cancer can kill almost anyone, the flu is not a priority in comparison. (NOTE: I have no idea how many people the flu actually kills every year, or if it is more than AIDS or cancer, this was just an example.)

I think statistics helps when you are really clueless about a subject. I use statistics often(experimental design) -- yes, I am clueless often in my work (it comes with working on new things). In general I have found experience will find a solution much faster than statistics will. The main caveat being the experienced researcher must be able to set aside prejudices in order to find the optimal solution. Sometimes that is not an easy thing to do.

I believe this basis for statistics versus experience could be used universally. However, often our own experiences interfere with our ability to interpret the results accurately. I've seen this many times in various statistical assessments I've been involved in.

Why and how did Einstein discover The Theory of Relativity? Was it based on statistics or experience or just because he was a genius not bound to either?

I would call it a combination of statistics (empirical data), personal observations and genius (ability to think "outside the box").

The speed of light was known way before 1905, and it was known to be constant, no matter how a lightsource and an observer moved relative to each other. All other physicists believed that lightwaves propagated in the "ether", and that somehow this ether was moving along with the Earth (otherwise the speed of light would have depended on the movement of the observer through the ether, and the speed of light would change with the Earth's movement around the Sun).

The statistics - the empirical data - was there for all to see, but Einstein was the only physicist to realize that lightwaves didn't propagate in the ether, and that the fact that the speed of light was constant meant that Newton's classical physics was wrong. Other physicists drew the wrong conclusions.

(Note: This is the Special theory of relativity. The General theory of relativity from 1915 also explains deviations from classical physics but deals with movement in strong gravitational fields. It is also so complicated that very few physicists really understand it - and I am NOT one of them. ;))

Ironically, Einstein didn't receive the Nobel prize for his theories of relativity but for his explanation of the photoelectric effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect).

(ability to think "outside the box"). by Montresor

Another element enters our discussion. The ability to take experience and statistics and arrive at new ideas. I think this last is of equal importance to the first two. We can be hampered by our experiences and we can be misled by statistics. However if we have the ability to reason we can take our experiences and with the use of statistics add in the experiences of others and arrive at a new theory. If that can be tested then we have a new fact to add to our knowledge.

From this my thinking is that experience and statistics are of equal importance but it is what we are able to do with them that is the most important thing.

I bet a lot of cave men/women saw fire and felt its warmth, saw round logs and stones rolling down a hill but it took one with the ability to see further, to see the ways in which these could be applied to their own lives to make use of them.

Drew:

If you want to see the primary data and pore over their hours of research, go look for it yourself.


If you had paid attention to the very 'research' (aka. Opinion pieces) you cited, you would realize that the scientists you quoted believe that the concept of race is both superficial and inappropriate to categorize the human species. I'm not sure if I subscribe to such a theory, but I'm willing to speak their language just for the sake of making an argument, while appeasing you.

Are populations of varying biogeographical origin are equal? Do they have the same mean 'potential' in all aspects of life? If so, is this belief supported by facts and statistics?


I'm not going to waste my time arguing about something this ridiculous.


Fantastic deflection. As to those who are *****ing that race vs. race has nothing to do with this thread, you're incorrect. 'Feel good' egalitarian beliefs that liberals such as Drew tend to hold are not conclusively supported by any hard data or fact. Yet this doesn't stop them from holding to such beliefs.

@Ghaldring: Whatever you want to think about the equality or inequality of race is fine, but we're way off-topic, aren't we? If you want to argue about whether one race is inherently smarter than another, and whether the burden of proof should lie in proving the affirmative or the negative, start another thread. (Just don't be surprised when I don't join you there.)

I think that we shouldn't be pitting statistics and experience against each other, actually. In order to make a plausible argument about anything, you really need both. If the statistics (raw data) countermand your experience (common sense), something is usually wrong. The discussion that follows shouldn't be about which is more important. They are both important. The discussion should be about how we reconcile the data with common sense. Data is what it is. It makes no judgments, has no bias, and makes no inherent arguments. Judgments, bias, and arguments are a function of interpretation, which falls under the category of common sense. Common sense (aside from not being very common) is every inch as important as data.

@Drew: How very true.
Both personal experience and statistics are useful on their own, but are best when used together. Statistics can be wrong, or simply made up. Comparing them to personal experience is something we do naturally (e.g you see a statistic that says x is more likely then y, yet you know from experience this is not the case.) However the process works both ways and statistics can cause you do doubt personal experience.

Is one better then the other? The situation will dictate.
My :2c: