Kate Pickett's response made depressing reading - presumably the inability to read a graph and understand statistics extends to those 'high educated people' who run the economy?
Did Putnam publish his data in peer reviewed journals? I found myself getting very angry when reading 'Bowling Alone' because at crucial junctures in the argument there were no hard data (i.e. actual numbers). I nearly gave up reading it - but obviously it was too important to do that. Not quite laymen perhaps, but I mentioned 'Bowling Alone' when doing a seminar with a bunch of clergy - I was immediately challenged on Putnam's data and asked questions about sample size, representativeness of samples, confidence intervals etc. Some of them had read the book and looked in the back for the data and found them wanting.
... but still, you can't please all of the people all the time.
Robert
Professor Robert Moore
School of Sociology and Social Policy
Eleanor Rathbone Building
The University of Liverpool
L69 7ZA
Telephone and fax: 44 (0) 1352 714456
________________________________________
From: email list for Radical Statistics [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bland, M. [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 17 March 2009 09:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: WHY MORE EQUAL SOCIETIES ALMOST ALWAYS DO BETTER
Kate Pickett (an epidemiologist, and certainly not afraid of statistics)
is a colleague, with an office just down the hall from me. I forwarded
Ray's email to her. She has sent this reply:
The reason for the lack of statistical detail in our book is because it
is a popular book, aimed at the layperson, and we found (somewhat to our
surprise) that a lot of highly educated people who saw the book in
manuscript didn't understand graphs, let alone statistics. We modelled
the final charts in the book on those used by Putnam in "Bowling Alone",
which people found easy to comprehend. For anybody interested in more
detail, all our methods and statistics are on The Equality Trust
website, and we gave a reference to this in the book.
They are available at: http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/methods
In addition, almost all of our findings have been previously published
in peer-reviewed journals, again references to these are made in the
book, and some, where copyright permits, can also be downloaded from the
website.
I'm not on the list, but would be happy for you to post this reply from
me. Far from being disdainful of statistics, we view them as a vital
social microscope which allows us to see patterns that are not apparent
to the naked eye. We live and breathe statistics, but sadly most people
don't, and we wanted to communicate our message to the broadest
readership possible.
Best, Kate.
There you have it!
Martin
Ray Thomas wrote:
>
> Why more equal societies almost always do better is the subtitle of a
> gallant book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
>
> In spite of the emphasis given by use of the word “equal” the authors
> appear to be scornful of statistic. There are plenty of charts in the
> book but most of them do not include statistics for the scales used.
> Typically the scales are labelled ‘low’ at the bottom of the vertical
> scale and high at the top end. Consistently the LH of the horizontal
> scale is labelled ‘low’ and the Right hand of the horizontal scale is
> label high. Typically the charts do not give the units of measurement.
>
> Can anyone explain the apparent disdainful attitude to statistics that
> seems to contradict the theme of the book?
>
> Ray Thomas
>
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***************************************************
J. Martin Bland
Prof. of Health Statistics
Dept. of Health Sciences
Seebohm Rowntree Building Area 2
University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: 01904 321334 Fax: 01904 321382
Web site: http://martinbland.co.uk/
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