Well, that's what I was thinking too. Apparently, though, there is another school of thought. I volunteered to "crunch" numbers for a cause that the executive director of a charity could use to make herself and her cause look very good. Nope, she didn't bite. She had a different perception of statistics.
- "Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted."
- Albert Einstein
- OK. But I don't want to hear any moaning and groaning when suddenly things unravel and the things that should have been counted weren't, and the things that counted weren't. Signiificance, trends, central tendencies, growth, and decline can be known factors.
- Oh well. I tried. For free even. But I think she thought I was arrogant or didn't really know what I was talking about. Even if the first part was true, she should have looked past the attitude for the benefit to her. She'll never know whether the second part was true or not since she couldn't ever understand that my offer contained something besides the raw numbers she was presenting in a table and calling statistics.
- The two of us live in different worlds. She wants to marvel at numbers. I want to know what the numbers mean. It's a matter of efficient citizenship to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment