ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607150128
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
WHAT IF our root problem isn't crime, corruption, mad cows, muddled politicians, Bosnia or the budget? Could it be numbers?
What if the view of life we get from endless statistics, projections, polls and predictions is the culprit? Are we being outwitted by numbers?
We all know how crucial numbers are today: Try functioning without a Social Security number, phone number, PIN number, locker number. What would you think if you never saw a government statistic, a census report, a Nielson rating or the latest public-opinion poll by networks, newspapers and "experts?" The source of all this information is statistics.
Then recall Mark Twain's wry comment about the three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. What is the implication? That statistics skim the surface; they end up with numbers rather than truths.
Who collects the numbers, and why? How large is the sampling? What questions are asked and how complete are the answers?
The TV-rating system, which determines what we will and won't see, is sometimes based on a few thousand viewer responses. Do they speak for the millions who are never polled?
When polled, do we always give true answers? Why are exit polls after elections, for example, often quite unlike election results? Recall the case of such polls when Doug Wilder was elected governor of Virginia.
Of course we need and value statistics and head counts, but they tell only part of the story. Computer-generated, they are binary: They only tabulate "yes" or "no." Most of our answers are in between. The numbers tell nothing of the emotions, ambiguities, doubts and pain behind the short answers.
We hear, for example, that 12 percent of Americans live below the poverty line. How much impression does that make on the 88 percent of us who eat, spend and consume more than we need? Computers know no compassion.
To live and learn mainly from numbers tends to kill poetic and metaphoric truths not available to digits. Too many of us live in the left lobe of the brain - the mathematical - and ignore the right.
We read Robert Burns' "My love is like a red red rose," and wonder if she has thorns. When told we should live in peace like doves, does this mean we should lay eggs? Absurd? Ask a teacher to give other, similar examples.
The place where numbers hit home hardest for many is on the stock market, where the numerical roller-coaster goes on week after week. Stock reports list column after column of numbers. But who can say what the market will do tomorrow, and why?
My maximum agony with numbers, as a professor, comes not from the stock market but from having to assign numerical grades, and evaluate student projects and transcripts. We try to be fair and precise. "Honor" grades are numbers turned into A and B. But just what constitutes a B? I have taught in three universities, where B varied from above 75, above 80, and above 85. Then how to turn the number into a letter - and perhaps add a symbol, "+" or "-"? Somehow we must.
With our current grade inflation, anything below a B seems insulting to an undergraduate, suicidal to a graduate student. Now President Clinton would offer educational support "for students with a B average." Will that coerce and inflate our grade system until it becomes meaningless?
Statistics are much less of a threat than demography, a booming new field in the Information Age: the study of population, mortality, preferences and lifestyles.
With all their electronic data, demographers can tell us more than we want to know about almost anything. Examples:
Fifty-nine percent of the people who claimed to have seen UFO's voted for Ross Perot in 1992.
The TV program "Roseanne" did better in Cleveland than any other major city.
Men in Detroit are major users of "Obsession" - not so anywhere else in Michigan.
Miami is big on red wine, not on white. In Minneapolis, just the reverse.
Is any of this really true? Who believes it?
The answer, as Michael J. Weiss points out in "Latitudes and Attitudes": people who want to run for office, open a mall or a massage parlor, build homes, move a store or a plant. And they will pay handsomely to "find out." They are hooked on numbers. Link electronic demography with capitalism, and a new industry is born.
No one can oppose the accumulation of data; information is always better than ignorance. But what does it mean? How can it be used?
We must employ a second "in" - interpretation. Even that isn't enough.
The third essential "in" is inspiration - the human facility to move forward to the higher plateau of knowledge. As Francis Bacon realized centuries ago, knowledge itself is power.
Nor should we stop there - there is a greater place still, which we call wisdom.
Surely the accuracy and utility of material in our Information Age varies greatly. Some of that information is more precious than gold; how separate the gold from the dross?
Some demographers are like people who take Polaroid pictures: instant, glossy, persuasive. But when are they misleading, even deceptive? As that great American showman, P.T. Barnum reminded us, there's a sucker born every minute. I don't want to be in that number.
The Romans were right. Caveat emptor - let the buyer beware.
Marshall Fishwick is a professor of humanities and communications studies at Virginia Tech.
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