Statistics are just numbers that people forget the next day
/The Boston Herald
Here are a few statistics clipped from Thursday's newspaper:
The healthiest people in the United States live in Hawaii and the sickest live in West Virginia.
West Virginia has twice as many smokers proportionally as Utah.
You're twice as likely to get killed in a car accident in Arkansas than in New Jersey.
The U.S. government debt, at $10.6 trillion, now totals $42,277 for every man, woman and child in the nation.
Ten years ago 9 cents of every dollar the United States spent was to pay interest; today it's 15 cents.
Credit card holders are now charging at the rate of about $2,110 each.
About 68 percent of all card holders don't pay off their balances each month.
The risk of being infected during surgery with the virus that causes AIDS is about one in 21 million.
The median probability is that four surgeons in every 1,000 are HIV-positive.
Small businesses owned by white men had on average $189,000 in receipts in 1987, far more than minorities and women. For firms owned by white women, receipts averaged $70,000; Asian and Pacific-Islander women $64,000; black women $41,000; Hispanic women, $38,000; and American Indian and Alaska native women $32,000.
Poverty in the United States was more widespread, severe and long-lasting during the 1980s than it was in any other Western democracy.
In the United States, 18.1 percent of households headed by 20- to 55-year-olds fell below the poverty line in 1986.
Two-thirds of those questioned in a new poll say President Bush is not spending enough time on domestic problems.
Thirteen percent of the Democrats questioned said they would vote in a primary for Gov. L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended Wednesday with a minor gain of 4.70 points at 3017.89 after shaking off early losses of nearly 13 points.
Are you bored yet? Is this enough? It's more than enough, I know, and yet this is exactly what we're exposed to every day: hundreds of numbers made to look important, but culled from an assortment of years mixed in with statistical predictions. If words were used instead of figures, statistics would be relegated to the horoscope page.
What's the purpose of all these statistics, I wonder?
Does it really improve our lives to know that we're twice as likely to get killed in a car accident in Arkansas than in New Jersey? Will people who take these things seriously now avoid Arkansas? Will it make us work harder and live longer to know that each of us is a walking debit? What are we supposed to do with all this information?
I sometimes think that we're supposed to do nothing with the numbers and that all the statistics and surveys are about one thing: jobs.
Counting keeps people busy.
"Why don't you count all the windows in the house," I told my son when he was small. He did, and then he counted the steps and the pictures on the wall and the lights and the clocks and the mirrors and he was occupied for hours.
Is this what it's all about? Does one of every nine Americans work for a survey company? Is it as simple as that? Or are there elves running around counting things while we're all asleep, taking notes, keeping track, stitching together all the numbers in our lives the way they stitched together shoes for the shoemaker?
This is not a weighty subject, I know. But neither are the statistics. That's the point. Statistics are only numbers. They just fill space. They don't change anything, because they're faceless and sterile and interchangeable. No matter how shocking statistics may sound, nobody even remembers them the next day.
