MAY THE STATS BE WITH YOU

The idea for this article came to me as a result of monitoring a bit of back and forth bickering which occurred on an internet discussion group. The topic was about Black vs. White in the realm of 'superiority'. Early on, it appeared to me that everyone must be using different dictionaries for that's the only generous assumption I could make without regarding them all as a pack of lunatics. One response contained a remark that the dictionary his opponent was using was "wrong". It reminded me of the discourse of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Alice in Wonderland. "A word means what I say it means. Nothing more and nothing less." I still continued to give all parties the benefit of my several doubts, however.

One of the major portions of the debate involved one side waving a batch of statistics in the others' faces and then getting the same in return. They all shouted that their statistics proved their point. One side referenced a 'study' whereby a group of Blacks scored an average of 120 on an 'IQ test'. The other retaliated with one which showed their average IQ to be 85. (People always select that which favors their point of view.) On and on it went, with shouts of bigotry, racism and prejudice. It was hardly intellectual and I felt their emotions would be better served if they all met in a field, after swilling down a few beers, and then 'going at it' with ball bats. Nothing would have been proven, of course, but it might have been more satisfying.

Statistics prove nothing! They are not supposed to prove anything so why people insist upon believing so is beyond me.

Suppose we grab a random batch of men and women and then record the maximum weight each can lift from the ground. All individuals will then have 2 pieces of data, their sex and the weight lifted. If we take the weight data, we can do all sorts of mathematical manipulations with it. We can calculate the arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, median, mode, variance, standard deviation, trivariate moving average, rank, and other bits of stuff dreamed up by mathematicians when they are not playing with themselves in the shower. All of these numbers derived from the original numbers, 'have their place' as the man in the TV commercial mentions. This is statistics.

If the weights lifted are ranked from greatest to smallest, we readily observe that the upper portion of the sequence contains mostly men. (Bertha the bruiser out-lifted Ronnie the runt, by the way.) Hmmm... Hmmm... It sort of looks like men just might be, on the average, better at lifting weights than women. The statistics do not prove that. They just sort of indicate that. It appears then, that most men are stronger than most women. Furthermore, it is therefore more probable that any given man is stronger than any given woman. The probability is quite high in fact. So high, that it's a very good thing to bet on. Always remember that an intelligent choice is always the one which has the highest probability of success. It's no guarantee, however. If I wanted a person to haul 300 lb. barrels from my truck, I'd be rather foolish to select a woman. (Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and quotas institutionalize foolishness.) As for the 2 groups, one can easily conclude that in regard to lifting weights, men are superior (the S-word!) to women.

From our weight lifting data, let's consider only the men and add another set of measurements -- their body weight. Following the same procedure, we readily note that heavier men seem to be lifting the heavier weights. It is not absolute since lard-assed Bernie, at 330 lbs., actually was the weakest of them all. Again, it is safe to bet that a big man is probably a strong man. If I still need someone to haul my 300 lb. barrels, I'd be wise to select a big, really big, man. Clyde, being a helium-brained liberal, would choose anyone since everyone is equal. It's too bad clowns of this type couldn't be coaxed into serious betting, that is, putting their money or lives, where their mouths are. But alas, like Bill the draft-dodger, they have no intention of suffering the consequences of their asinine actions. They play. We pay.

All molecules of water are not equal. Sorry Lennie, Mother Nature doesn't pay much attention to your egalitarian malarkey. Some molecules of water have a greater mass than others and some have lower kinetic energy than others. In any duck pond, some liquid water molecules turn into gas molecules (evaporation) while the other just sit their looking stupid. When I took high school science, we learned that temperature was a measure of the AVERAGE kinetic energy of the particles of a substance. Average? Holy shit! That means some are below average while others are above average. What kind of equality is this? When it comes to kinetic energy, some molecules are superior to others! They must be Nazi! Look for the gas. Look for the gas.

As I previously mentioned, some molecules of water have more mass than the others. When the development of the hydrogen bomb began, the boys in the back room didn't apply Affirmative Action to the water molecules. Instead, they DISCRIMINATED! They chose deuterium oxide, also known as 'heavy water'. The lithium hydride used in the first bombs was actually lithium deuteride -- the one containing heavy hydrogen.

All kernels of popcorn are not equal. Some pop before the others and some never pop at all. Let's pop some corn. If we plotted the amplitude of the popping sound against time, and then smoothly connected the dots on our graph paper, we'd have a curve shaped somewhat like a bell -- the Gaussian distribution curve. (If you hate Gauss because he was a White man, then call it the 'normal' distribution curve.) This is the sort of data statisticians love to apply standard deviations to. Mathematicians have a hard time sensing the real world. They require a set of numbers to bring it all home. A cheetah probably realizes that most gazelles are hard to catch but a few are easy to catch while others are impossible to catch. Our smiling cheetah lives with the bell-shaped curve and so do those of us who haven't had our brains turned into tapioca pudding by modern 'education'.

Statistics is no god. It is just mathematical gymnastics with data. We apply it in order to get some idea of what in hell is going on. Sometimes it helps and at other times, it clouds the issue. Let's not get mired down in gobbledegook.

I think I can safely say at this point, that some people are better than others when it comes to playing the flute. In regard to flute playing, I will say that humans are better at flute playing than are horses. Thus, I can correctly surmise that humans are superior to horses in the flute playing department.

Tall people are superior to short people when basketball is mentioned. Hawks are superior to penguins when it comes to flying. Bill Clinton is superior to Mother Theresa when it comes to lying. OK? Are you comfortable with the term superior, so far? Good.

Without a distracting argument, let's agree that there exists something called the Black Race and the White Race. Let's collect some data in regard to how long a randomly selected group of each can stand in the hot sun before their hides are fried. Do you want to bet which group would survive the longest? In this vein, does it cause your anger to rise when I conclude that Blacks are superior? I hope you are calm by now. Take a deep breath, and analyze what has transpired. I have mentioned race. I have mentioned a superior race (relative to sensitivity to the sun's rays). Let's say I am a Black man who realizes that, in this example, he belongs to a race which is superior. That's racism! No more. No less. Does this mean that I, as a Black man, hate those silly honkies who can't stand in the sun without looking like a boiled lobster? When in hell did God grant any set of loud-mouthed idiots the right to equate racism with hate? Or superiority, for that matter, with hate? If you, my friend, belong in this group, then you have been had. The propagandists have grabbed you by the short hairs and yanked. They believe, as Harry Hopkins did when Franklin Roosevelt asked him about telling the people something. Harry replied, "No. The people are too stupid to understand."

A rock has no emotions and a rock really doesn't do much of anything. Emotions cause people to act and the stronger the emotion, the greater is the energy to act. (The government doesn't want you to act on anything -- just stand still and be sheared.) Love, and hate, are two of our strongest emotions. We no longer love with the fervor which people did in the past. Sex has become little other than an alleviation of an itch. We copulate with this one and then move on to the next one. No love. No nothing. We cannot love if we become conditioned not to hate for hate is a guardian of love. If a man loves his wife, should he feel no hate for another who tortured, raped, and eventually killed her? To love one's daughter does not mean one hates the daughters of others. To love one's family does not mean one hates other families. To love one's race does not mean he hates other races. To love one's race and take pride in its superiority in certain areas, does not imply that he hates other races. Where did this nonsense all begin? And why does it continue?

The media -- especially television -- plus the schools, are the propaganda arms of the government. They define the words we use and then deaden our God-given ability to think by presenting as 'fact' contradictory and often absurd, material. The last thing they want us to be is rational. I have tasted it.

I used to teach some of the above in my classes and ultimately got the boot. If my memory serves, the last words the principal said to me were, "You are disturbing the tranquility of this school. You are encouraging the kids to think. That's disruptive and I am going to see to it that you never teach again. I want you to have a job greasing cars." I never forgot those words and if I had another chance, I'd do the same thing all over again.

Robert Frenz

5 June 1999