It is amazing that readers of BNet don't appear to be aware of the fallacies that continue to be perpetuated by statistics. I smoke but the chances are less than 20% that I will die of lung cancer. However, the chances that I will eventually die are 100%. You don't smoke and the chances that you will die of lung cancer are under 2%, but the chance that you will eventually die is also 100%. You may even die before me. I hope not, but it could happen.
When reporting about researchers whose studies tout their statistical results as ground-breaking news, it is wise to consider the methods that were used to gather the data, the conceptualization and operationalization of the variables, and basic information about the statistical results of the study. I don't trust the researchers' interpretation of their methodology and statistical findings because they aren't going to say, 'oops we screwed up in our research design by not including X2 as a possible influence on Y.' But I can tell that if age is the only independent variable used to assess an influence on decision-making ability, then the study is flawed from the start. It doesn't really matter how many control variables are thrown in the mix. If they want to find that age is the dominant variable influencing decionmaking skills, then they can do that rather easily, quickly, and unethically. They do an ex post facto re-design of the research model and voila!, here it is, just as we expected. They have very strong incentives to find what they were hoping to find because there is a good chance the research was funded by some corporation or government agency that stands to benefit when they are flooded by 52 year-olds beating on their door and begging for consultations about their financial planning before they turn 53, because at that age they won't have the sense to know how outrageously the financial planners and/or government bureaucrats are lying to them. But from what I've read here today, there doesn't seem to be much 'decision-making power by commenters on this web-site anyway, so I'll keep my money with Mr. Buffet if you please. He is what is called a statistical outlier in the business. While everyone Mr. Buffett's age has surely gone over the edge and is rapidly descending to the level of decision-making ability they had at the age of two (hmm, me go pee-pee in my pants or not?), he is still at the top of his powers, just check his gains over the past year. This is called anecdotal evidence and it is useless as datum for a scientific study using quantitative methods. But when you simplify a scientific study so much that is has been rendered meaningless as anything other than an 'urban legend,' we're likely to hear the following dialogue or something similar,
"By god I saw Ol' Whitfield takin' a whiz over behind Tuffy's bar the other day. Wonder what's got him doin' that? Y'all think he's back on the T-Bird agin?" "Aw hell Jesse Ray, he turned 53 a few days ago, didn't y'all know about that?" "Well sunuvabich, I guess that study them 2 fed dudes and a coupla professors done was true after all."
Yeah, OK so that might not be the best example, but I can tell you this, Jesse Ray and his buddy have a lot more common sense than what I've seen posted here today. I know because I grew up with them, and I'd probably still be there if the racism didn't sicken me. And the fact that having 'ambition' meant someone had aspirations of being manager of the produce section at the Walmart Superstore out on the 63 By-pass.
Anyway, I assume this study purports to have been conducted within the scope of what is acceptable as scientific methodology, if not in fact, at least in theory. But the only comment that was even remotely critical, turned out to be the voice of Norman Vincent Peale reincarnated for the 21st century. That hardly counts as critical commentary. Having poorly reported information that a study was conducted about the topic is more useful than the mystical garbage that flake is selling, because I at least can surmise what the researchers might have done to get those results. But then I was a graduate student in sociology for 9 years, so I didn't have much choice but to learn how to interpret poorly designed and shoddily conducted studies because my professors were nationally and internationally respected. They didn't allow intellectual incompetence or laziness. But I've recently learned that what I thought was common knowledge among those who had at least a bachelor's degree would understand the basic principles of the scientific method. Don't they still teach that over there? I'm sorry it's been over 12 years since I taught university students in the usa, and while the classes weren't exactly filled with budding Einsteins, they could at least understand and correctly interpret descriptive statistics and even some of the simpler inferential ones.
Well, times change. After 8 years of W, I can imagine how low the threshold has dropped regarding that which is considered essential knowledge to be a contributing member of society, a voice in the body politic, and a useful unit of production, has fallen. But I had no idea that it would wipe out the critical thinking ability of 2 generations of adults. At least the young people in their 20s know when they are being taken for a ride. Whether they know how it's being done is not so important for them since they will hopefully have many years to try and straighten up what happened when you nitwits let W and his gang '(mis)rule the country for 8 years and if you add the time the Republicans gained control of Congress, there was almost 14 years of nearly complete domination of the diretion of national politics by the Grand Ole Pary. Well, they have probably left the country in an even bigger mess than the freakish incident in which the Republican's gained control of Congress in 1947 and emasculated the only truly progressive labor legislation the US ever had, the Taft-Hartley Act, right after the WWII as a backlash vote against Truman's thin credentials (I don't know if his decision to commit genocide against the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by dropping two big ones on them affected the Off-year election of '46, but I kind of doubt it. So he belongs to that group of benighted mass murderers such as Theodore Roosevelt and Kemal Ataturk thru Hitler, Stalin, Truman, chairman Mao, Stroessner, Pinochet, Pol Pot, and Nixon and Kissinger.) Yes, just defying people around my age is enough to give me some hope for the future over there, if you haven't already blown it for them before they even get a chance.
And what does this have to do with this study and article? Everything, because this is exactly the kind of lightweight reporting and nonsensical commentary that allowed a demented boy to start two wars in countries he couldn't even find on a map and while drumming up the big fear about terrorist attacks in vidalia, Illinois and other strategic locations in the usa, the ecoomy was on its way to the dumpster but no one but Pandit Raghmuran Rajanji had the sense to question that the amount leveraged on CDOs as a tool for hedging was not exactly a sound strategy because a house of cards has little chance of survival when the first stiff wind blows.
And so much for that. Thankfully all of my savings is in Japanese yen and it seems like an optimal time to retire before I turn 50 and move to India where I can live well for the next 40 years. And if by some chance I do happen ot make it 89 years old, there'll be another anecdote for you: he smoked for 69 years but got run over by a city bus and it killed him. And some bright person will say, "well, if he hadn't smoked for 69 of his 89 years, maybe he could have gotten out of the way of the bus before it ran over him." And when that is said, I'll be thankful that it was quick and relatively painless, because there is nothing worse than seeing an old man in pretty good shape beating some young smartass to a pulp with his lead-filled cane. Thank you for the stimulating opportunity to see how well my cognitive functioning is holding up. I have some serious doubts about its durability and acuity these days so if there are mistakes in logic or reasoning or any other mistaken assumption I've made, I would grateful for any constructive criticism offered. My 'skin' is like leather. And aThat's probably the most important thing I learned in university, that we can only improve when our mistakes are pointed out to us. And I've had so much experience at having my mistakes pointed out to me that I actually welcome the information. thank you, sal
