At 10:21 AM 09/07/2001 -0400, Michael wrote:
>Some interesting tidbits from sunday's Washington Post...
>
>... found that those who frequently attended church were 23 percent less
>likely to die during the study period than people who didn't regularly go
>to church. "
Hmmm... some hypothetical figures:
If the group that professed to going "frequently" numbered 4,800 of the
5,000 people in the survey and 75 of them died during the survey, while
just 2 people in the other group died then you could say that regular
church-goers were statistically "23 percent less likely to die".
Of course "frequently" is not a very precise term, so if we choose a better
one, and divide the two groups up into people who go "once in a blue moon"
and those who go more often than that then the results almost certainly
would have been different as one of those 2 people who died in the
infrequent church-goers' group would probably have been in the
more-often-than-once-in-a-blue-moon attendees and suddenly people who
rarely attended church would have been almost 50% less likely to die. :-)
It really is a bit like saying that most people have more than the average
number of legs... except that we have some kind of knowledge of the numbers
there. We have no idea of the numbers in the religious statistics, though
we do know something of their agenda.
Cheers,
- Miriam
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Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape?
A. They are both purple... except for the elephant.
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