Something wrong, there
Nov. 10th, 2004 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gmonkey42Look at this graph of what types of food people eat while driving. There's one problem with it: 55+34+33+24=146. So what do the numbers mean? Is '55' the percentage of all people who eat fast food while driving? Or the percentage of those who eat fast food among those who eat while driving?
Along the same lines, as much as I love fuckthesouth.com, I think there's something they could be more clear about: the divorce statistics are per 1000 people; they don't take into account that in some states, more people get married than in others. It's still true that in the blue states, there are fewer divorces per capita but (I haven't looked this up yet) it's likely that there are also fewer marriages per capita in the blue states. What the statistics are saying is not necessarily that a smaller percentage of marriages end in divorce but that fewer couples in the blue states rush into a marriage that's going to end in divorce. What I've heard is that the national divorce rate is about 50%; in this case, it doesn't mean that 50% of all people get divorced, it means 50% of all married couples get divorced. Anyway. The blue states are still better. I'm just saying. ETA: one of the links does talk about how people in the red states might be getting married younger and that partly accounts for it. So the links do mention it.
Along the same lines, as much as I love fuckthesouth.com, I think there's something they could be more clear about: the divorce statistics are per 1000 people; they don't take into account that in some states, more people get married than in others. It's still true that in the blue states, there are fewer divorces per capita but (I haven't looked this up yet) it's likely that there are also fewer marriages per capita in the blue states. What the statistics are saying is not necessarily that a smaller percentage of marriages end in divorce but that fewer couples in the blue states rush into a marriage that's going to end in divorce. What I've heard is that the national divorce rate is about 50%; in this case, it doesn't mean that 50% of all people get divorced, it means 50% of all married couples get divorced. Anyway. The blue states are still better. I'm just saying. ETA: one of the links does talk about how people in the red states might be getting married younger and that partly accounts for it. So the links do mention it.
