October 28, 2005
A Postmodern Understanding of the Glass
Is the glass half empty or full?
Statistics often lend themselves to being interpreted in many different ways. People can form opposing arguments based on the same statistic. This seems confusing in a dualistic-minded society. The fact of the matter is, things can be in opposition to each other without being polar opposites. Donnie Darko made this point painfully clear to his health teacher.
For example, I can say that racism is a problem caused by a particular culture's misconceptions of another race...
-OR-
I can also say that it is a problem caused by a lack of positive cross-racial experience resulting in a negative evaluation of another race...
Both claims made consider racism a problem; so, they are not contradictory. But, they do oppose each other, just not directly. These are contrary statements. This gives us a sense of a multi-dimensional understanding of truth. Truth is not either this thing or that. Truth is a dynamic which can be interpreted depending on context. Maybe these two statements are both right. Hmmmmm... If they both are valid and accurate, why not?
Proportion and scale play into this understanding. These are two distinct ways of looking at facts. Proportion is the contextual side of fact. It's like a pie chart; it compares the part to the whole. Scale is the more linear understanding of fact; it evaluates the part individually. Both are very accurate and truthful ways of looking at something. However, neither one is the be-all-end-all for measuring fact. Both are equally good ways of measuring fact, but their strengths and weaknesses are different.
Let's say we wanted to measure--as in the book It Ain't Necessarily So--whether or not the state of traditional (nuclear) families is declining. Which method would be the most adventageous to use?
Since there is also the factor of population that can rise or fall, thus affecting the number of families, we should take the number of nuclear families in proportion to the whole and compare the data to the proportion of non-traditional families.
If we wanted to see whether or not AIDS has increased greater in men than women--also in the book--we would use scale. Why? Because AIDS declines year-by-year, proportions of cases would not have the same common denominator. In other words, the raw number of cases in women may have decreased more in number than men, but risen in proportion exceding the male proportion.
Is the glass half empty or full? It all depends on context.
Posted by EvanReynolds at October 28, 2005 12:06 AM
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