On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 06:32:19 -0400, Joe Bemier
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:00:47 -0400, wrote:
On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 21:49:42 -0500, Don Fearn
wrote:
It also makes me wonder how many of these "saw accidents" were guys on
a metal framing job/trim job with "chopsaw" or just the guy you see on
a ladder with a skilsaw or cutting 2x4s on his knee. You see that if
you are around construction sites very much..
The SawStop doesn't have anything to do with either of those
situations, does it? Duh.
I was just wondering how many "accidents" in the statistic they used
are also irrelevant.
For sure it is a valid question.
Statistics are very easily portrayed as one wishes.
For example -
The death rate among persons over 63 who quit smoking is higher than
those who continue to smoke. This is a true and valid statistic.
Thus, statistics can be very misleading. Most of the statistics we see
in our daily lives are worthless because we don't have associated
information. USA Today likes to print fancy looking charts and graphs
to go with a particular story. However, try to find the confidence
interval or standard deviation to go with the data. The charts are
nice, but unless we can see how the data was prepared and the
variable, it means very little.
In a Political Science class I once had it was pointed out that year
after year there is a proven direct correlation between the
consumption of ice cream and the incidence of rape. Look at any year
and you will see that starting in January as the total amount of ice
cream per week or month increases, so do the number of reported rapes.
Some might be tempted to proclaim that this is proof that the
consumption of ice cream causes rape and decide that we should outlaw
ice cream. I suppose others might conclude that rapists must consume
vast quantities of ice cream after doing their crime and thus police
should stake out Ben & Jerrys to look for rapists.
Others might be tempted to note that both ice cream consumption and
rape tend to increase and decrease as outside temperatures vary.
I believe Mark Twain noted that there are three kinds of lies...lies,
damned lies and statistics.
Dave hall