More for support than illumination
There were two Stat-of-the-Week nominations (from Patricia de Guzman and Samantha Post) for the Conservative Party’s use of the Durex Sex Survey to oppose providing subsidised contraception. We’ve seen this survey number before on StatsChat and it was in the NZ media when the figures were released, back in 2007.
What’s really striking about many of the stories is the focus specifically on promiscuity of women, when the number that the survey was claiming to estimate is the same for heterosexual men and heterosexual women as a simple matter of arithmetic.
As is so often the case, the political position seems to be developed independently and statistics sought to drape around it. Or as Andrew Lang put it they “use statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts — for support rather than for illumination.”
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
On his interview on Q and A he didn’t even know of the survey. Are you surprised?
13 years ago