Liars Figure and Figures Lie

I took a bunch of math in school – three years of algebra, a year of trigonometry, a year of geometry, and a year of calculus. Then came college--five quarters of calculus, a quarter of differential equations, and then practically every other class was calculus based. Would anyone care to watch me solve a second order differential equation with nothing but a #2 pencil and a very large eraser today? You might be waiting a while as those brain cells have been reprogrammed over the past 20 or so years.

In the middle of studying vectors, differentials and integrals came a math class called “Statistics.” Some people spend an entire four years of college learning statistics. A class lasting one quarter was enough to tell me that I didn’t want to be a statistician. There was a positive side to taking statistics, however. Statistics is what keeps me from being a gambler. I don’t play poker, I don’t like to roll the dice, and I don’t, except on rare occasions, buy lottery tickets. I guess that you could say that that one statistics class has saved me a lot of money over the years.

The American public could benefit from a small dose of statistical education. If they understood statistics, I believe that most newspapers and TV stations would go out of business or at least be forced to make substantial changes in their reporting. They could make some attempt to put things they write about into perspective with supporting data that gives their readers more information than “someone died” or “someone screwed up.”

For instance, if you followed the news back in the late 1990’s, you could be convinced that air bags were the biggest threat to the lives of children and small adults since the Bubonic Plague. Every single time someone was killed by an air bag, the local press and the national news blared the story in their headlines and the public demanded reform. In this CNN article they state that:

“From 1996-2000, 191 people died from air bag-related injuries, including 116 children, according to government statistics. The children were either not wearing a seat belt or were improperly restrained in the front seat.”

So what was actually doing the killing, the air bag--or bouncing off of the first hard surface encountered by the kid’s body during impact? And did the article bother to mention that there were 41,945 total people killed (710 under the age of 5) in the year 2000 alone? I don’t want even one mothers’ precious child or grandfathers’ grandchild to meet an untimely fate in an automobile, but let’s get a grip on the sensationalism.

Or how about shark attacks? Every spring, commencing with the first documented shark bite, the smiling talking TV heads and the bold news headlines convince the citizens of middle America that those of us living here on the coast are literally walking on a sea of shark fins every time we hazard to wade into our local waters. In reality, you have a greater chance of being one of the 90 people struck and killed by lightening than being bitten by a shark. Notice I said bit, not killed.

And how many people do you know whom refuse to fly on a commercial airliner? I have had endless conversations about how so-and-so refuses to ever get on “one of ‘em thangs.” Gimme a break, pluu-ease! Between 1982 and March 2001, only an average of only 120 persons per year were killed in commercial aviation accidents. You have an infinitely better chance of dieing on the way to the airport in your car than you do once you get on the great silver bird.

So, I’ll cut to the chase now.

All of the above rantings bring me to my real point in writing this post. This New York Times article makes an ominous political issue for President Bush out of the apparent “loss” of 380 tons (760,000 pounds) of HMX and RDX explosives in Iraq. The article actually mentions some numbers that could add to the reader’s perspective but, as usual, they bury the information well past the first three paragraphs the average reader scans through.

You see, a total of 243,000 tons (486,000,000 pounds) of munitions have already been destroyed by coalition forces and an additional 163,000 tons (326,000,000 pounds) have been secured and are scheduled for destruction.

Cracking out my extensive mathematical education, this means that 0.0935% of the total munitions discovered in Iraq have been misplaced. Less than one tenth of one percent. I did this calculation with math I learned in the first 6 years of my education. I didn’t need calculus, but I did need to calculate a statistical percentage--sixth graders call it a ratio.

Forgetting, for a moment, that there is a high probability that the explosives were removed from the Al Qaqaa complex months before US forces arrived, why is it that a whole building full of college graduates at The New York Times, not to mention a whole country full of people who are at least in theory the products of 12 years of free government education-- are not able to see the insignificance of this non-event?

I've got to go outside and scream now...

UPDATE October 26, 2004

Just as I suspected, the odor I smelled earlier was that of Dan Rather's stinky stocking feet as he tiptoed around behind the scenes of this story. It has been reported that the NY Times beat CBS's 60 minutes to the draw with the repackaging of a story first reported in April 2003.

CBS wanted to wait until Sunday night. Good thing for the free world that it came out early so the Bush campaign, Fox News, Drudge, Limbaugh, and the Blogosphere can do some fact finding and get the truth out. The initial contradiction came from an surprising source, NBC News, that actually had a reporter imbeded with the Army unit that went into the Al Qaqaa compound on April 10, 2003.

The reporter, Lia Ling Jew, has started a bit of soft backpeddling in an interview on MSNBC. She stated "that the 24-hour visit by elements of the 101st Airborne Division was "more of a pit stop." U.S. troops did not conduct a detailed search of the compound nor did they try to prevent looting, she said." So I guess she is now implying that our troups were sitting around scratching their privates while the local thugs ran willy-nilly through the compound?

CNN reports that the October 10th Iraqi letter to the IAEA "identified the vanished explosives as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or 'pentaerythritol tetranitrate.' " One question I have personally is what the context of the Iraqi provisional governments' letter to the IAEA was, and why was the letter written 18 months after the fact? Was it simply a formality or were they reporting something that they thought was new?

Regarding Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general (why does every leader outside the US have to have the word "general" in their title?) of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, he is "very concerned." Mr. El Baradei, who was born in Egypt, is in fact a lawyer, not a nuclear scientist. Like Hans Blix, he has a long history of foot dragging on behalf of the Iraqi's and Iranians and holding opinions contrary to those of US anministrators.

Watch this story spin and spin and the Kerry Campaign keep on yelling. They already have a new campaign ad out and Kerry mysteriously mentioned "missing explosives" in the second debate.

Was he in on this story before hand? Could be...