For years I have been warning visitors to this site to be careful when using statistics that they've read from Forbes to the Wall Street Journal to the Federal Register, especially the Federal Register. Statistics can be used by governments, corporations ... hell, everybody to deceive or to "prove" points or reinforce their own beliefs. I've often wondered if we don't read books written only by authors with whom we agree, and now I wonder if that proposition isn't rhetorical.
Anyway, two weeks ago "The Weekly Standard" reported that "approximately 70 percent of the visits to Internet porn sites come during regular office hours," and that "the average worker admits to wasting 2 hours each workday" visiting such sites.
Of course, the first question should be what's an "average worker?" Second, if the average worker is looking at porn two hours a day, what's the extraordinary worker doing? Maybe our average workers are "gifted." What if 60 percent of those who are gifted are able to visit 50 percent more porn sites during working hours, thereby skewing the results by 37 percent?
Then one has to question the premise: if 70 percent of the visits to porn sites are done during regular working hours, does that necessarily mean that it's workers who are doing the visiting. Could be kids who are sick at home. Could be retired people. Could be people who are out of work taking a break from job hunting. Could be the all the college kids who say that they're conducting psychological studies of the effects of porn sites on ambidexterity and work.
And then what are "regular working hours?" There are at least 12 normal working hours in the U.S. and Canada when you consider that there are five time zones between Hawaii and New York.
Carried to its logical extremes, who are these employees/workers? They aren't people on an assembly line ... except for those at GM who went on strike today and now have plenty of free time during normal working hours. There's a hint in the study that this doesn't include executives because execs aren't "workers." How about middle managers? Yeah, they're workers. But how many of these workers in total are men and how many are women? Do women visit porn sites? During work? Viewed only in this context, what's the difference between the sexes? And is the difference only during work. Where is Carrie Bradshaw when you need her?
No matter what assumptions you make, the study offers no suggestions. It can't. During the same week, another study claims that American workers are almost 30 percent more productive than their European counterparts. Can I make the assumption that porn makes Americans more productive, or is it that porn site visitors can multi-task better than we thought. If so, should we make it mandatory, allowing of course for reasonable religious and disability accommodations.
In the six statistics courses I had to take in college, I got three D's and three B's (they always give B's in grad school). Now I have a hunch that only those who get A's in statistics believe them. I am logically concluding that anyone with a 3.5 to 4.0 GPA in college who took any statistics courses automatically be crossed off your list of potential candidates for any positions who you may have open. My study shows that there's a 96 percent chance that these people will just be wasting your time with surveys that will momentarily make them look good. The only exception to this is if you're part of HR for the federal government.
By the way, it was also during this week that another study reported that the number of "new bipolar disorder diagnoses in children jumped 4,000 percent" between 1994 and 2003! ("The Week," September 21, page 24.) What makes this suspicious was that teachers said that the poles had switched from North-South to East-West.
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