The Statistical Viewpoint

The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published since 1878, is already out for view this year. It is a comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. That is, it gives stats on just about all "stuff" in the country. This makes it fun to read, for as we all know statistics both lie and tell the truth. Which it does in a specific instance probably depends on what you believe the truth to be.

Every year the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private organizations put together this huge document and it's all suppose to tell us the trends the country is leaning toward. According to the Census Bureau the most popular reads of the statistics are in the areas of population, death, income and the labor force. That's odd, given the fact that sex is one of the categories in it. I have always read that we think about sex too much. Well, maybe men do. I think the stated purpose (help guide the nation in the right direction) of the Statistical Analysis is less real than the actual one, which is to amuse ourselves with or provide evidence for our discussions about anything that can be argued with a statistical reference as an aid.

I decided to have a look at some of the information contained in the SA. It would be impossible to try to cite all or even a tiny part of it as validation or refutation of the SA. First I went to the population section. When I opened the 'Population by Selected Ancestry Group and Region' section to get an idea of where so many of our immigrants come from I saw something missing from the list of nations and percent of our population who have ancestors from them. It was the fact that no Hispanic ancestry was listed. Instead in a footnote at the bottom it said, 'Excludes Hispanic origin groups'. Hmm statistics not only lie..they hide things too. But why hide this? The SA lists Germany as the nation with the greatest number of ancestors in the U.S. But I suspect it is or soon will be Mexico. When I dial my phone and reach a number it never says to me "Press one to speak German".

Having been a teacher I was curious about the number of foreign born students. It seems to be exploding in numbers. So I went to look at 'Students Who Are Foreign Born or Who Have Foreign-Born Parents'. The SA says that Asian and Hispanic students are the most likely ones to have a parent who was born outside the country.

In the case of Asians it is 92 % and Hispanics 65%. There are also about 55 million white elementary and secondary school students, about 11 million black students and about 14 million Hispanic school kids. This tells me for sure that the largest minority group in the country is and will be the Hispanic. Of course, it is just a matter of time before the Hispanic illegal invasion of the U.S will make that group the majority race rather than a minority one. One more category to mention....the age of our death. I clicked the 'Life Expectancy' table to find that from the past 30 years to today we are all living a longer time. Whites have the longest life expectancy in the U.S. with white women living on average to age 81. White men live only to about 78 years of age. I assume it is because all the nagging from the females takes on average about two years of life from us. (Hehe But by age 78 we are mostly glad to go just to escape the constant hectoring). On average, for all races, people are living 8-10 years longer than in 1970.

The Statistical Analysis does have many facts. But what matters to most people is which ones we want to believe and how we interpret them. Have I got my facts right?