#  Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

     Details    Sara Roos   ![logo](https://mail.citywatchla.com//templates/ja_teline_v/images/logo.png)         May 20 2013       [ARCHIVE](https://mail.citywatchla.com/archive)   - [  Previous Article **LA Times ‘Primal Scream’ Objection to Prop C … More about the Times Than the Ballot Measure** ](https://mail.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5103:la-times-primal-scream-objection-to-prop-c-more-about-the-times-than-the-ballot-measure&catid=16)
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> ![](https://mail.citywatchla.com/images/stories/May-2013/cw11041k.png)MUSE WITH ME - I listened to LAUSD’s head honcho call himself a “numbers guy” recently: “…mathematics, chemistry, physics – I get that; I’m a *numbers guy*”. With breath-taking self-righteousness for one with such [shady academic credentials](http://www.susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9593), he asserts the common, insidious mistake of believing that just because some concept is quantified it holds inherent meaning.
>
> Sure, [numbers can be manipulated](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LiesDamnedLiesAndStatistics). And mathematical models can be built to parse its constituent components. That’s what statisticians do – they try to identify all the bits that together compose reality.

 But those constituent components – which are just numbers – have to themselves have some tie to reality. Without knowing what a number represents – what it measures, how and why – without that backward tie to reality, any mathematical modeling has no practical interpretation, no meaning.

So *numbers guys* can do all the numbers-manipulation they want, all the mathematical modeling and calculating that so intimidates far too many. But in the end the interpretation of numbers that do not measure a parameter accurately, amounts to just so much magical thinking.

And therein lies the difference between a *numbers guy*, who admires numbers for their purity alone, and a statistician, who searches for a valid mathematical argument to capture reality. And, by the way, it is the difference between these two that provides cover for the public’s disdain for statistics. (Ethical) Statisticians do not [lie with numbers](http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728%E2%80%9D), people with statistical software do.

Of course this all matters, a lot. When the entire enterprise of a school, including its [“permission” to expand](http://4lakidsnews.blogspot.com/2011/03/possible-loss-of-classrooms-to-charters.html), its teachers’ livelihood, its students’ educational future, its community’s integrity — when all this is dependent on some one number like, say, API or a “proficiency” score improvement over a short period of time, that number had better represent some clear, uncontroversial metric of excellence.

But it [doesn’t](http://www.fairtest.org/The+Limits+of+Standardized+Tests). It is folly to attribute a false degree of objectivity to an undertaking as inherently subjective and transcendental as ‘Education’. Else, one day you awaken to discover the [educational landscape revolutionized](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/report-documents-charter-school-growth/2011/10/19/gIQAcKEHyL_blog.html), and [to no good end](http://www.epi.org/files/2013/bba-rhetoric-trumps-reality.pdf).

*(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at* [*redqueeninla.wordpress.com*](http://redqueeninla.wordpress.com) *)*

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 11 Issue 41

Pub: May 21, 2013

  - [  Previous Article **LA Times ‘Primal Scream’ Objection to Prop C … More about the Times Than the Ballot Measure** ](https://mail.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5103:la-times-primal-scream-objection-to-prop-c-more-about-the-times-than-the-ballot-measure&catid=16)
- [  Next Article **Los Angeles Politics Needs More Women** ](https://mail.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5105:los-angeles-politics-needs-more-women&catid=16)
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