Statistical Stupidity

Hey, ready for a quick bonus rant?  Glad to hear it!  This one is something from the local news regarding another situation of half the story.  They talked about a way in which Syracuse, NY got in a publication.



Depending on your view, this could be a good thing or a bad thing.  Someone did some research (no doubt paid for with a grant from the federal government) to find out which cities had the highest number of bars per 10,000 people.  Funny that they came up with Syracuse being number 6 on the list.  Something like 7 bars per 10,000 people.  After "breaking" the story, they tried to reason out how it could happen but that is really a worse explanation then the actual story so I won't go into it.  The part that annoys me is that they didn't state what the criteria was.  I have stated before that a majority of the population in the Syracuse area doesn't live in the city.  That makes the city a rather small one in all truth.  Basically this is research is stating that there are something like 49 bars in the city.  Yep, the city is only about 70,000 people.  By having such a large part of the population not living in the city the percent of bars will be skewed, no wonder it was sixth!


I went to college in a smaller city in central New York, Oswego.  That city is roughly 30,000 people including the college students.  I was always told that there were some 60 bars in the city, and I believe it.  That gives a ratio of roughly 20 bars per 10,000 people.  So why wasn't in at the top of the list (which was apparently 11 in New Orleans)?  A couple of reasons, one is opinion the other is fact.  The fact is that they had a cut off threshold for the size of the city.  Makes sense as not everything that is incorporated as a city should necessarily be called a city.  The opinion is that this was done by some marketing and tourist group that is supposed to drive young people, or heavy drinkers, to tourist type cities where prices are high.  Think about it, who would want to go on vacation to a small city where the only attraction was to drink?  That and family would be about the only reason most would spend a vacation in a small place like Oswego.  But if you are talking about a place where there is much more to do like New Orleans.


I just wish they would give all the details when they talk about things like this.  It would make things much better in the long run.