I saw an interesting link on Instapundit today, under the headline “men on strike”.

According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.

The article went on to elaborate that this was a huge societal change caused by feminist women being too angry and unmarriable for men to bother.

Really? Because feminism started in 1997?

Despite the hoards of internet commenters regaling everyone in the comments sections about how their own lives (and ex-wives), like, totes prove that women are awful (obvi), I felt a little dubious.  I was curious about  this survey…..if we were really reading this that women value marriage more than men now, was that not true in 1997?  I remember 1997, and I’m pretty sure the sexual revolution (cited in the article as part of the problem) was over by then.

Anyway, since most Pew Research studies are surveys of about 1000 people, I went searching for the sample size on this one.  I was curious what those 60 or so males were answering in 1997 that was so different.  Of course I had to search the Pew website for a while to find the survey (my suspicions grow when articles don’t provide a link) but I found it here.  

As I scrolled down, one graph caught my eye:

Wait a minute….that graph shows men and women being pretty equal on the topic of marriage.  What gives?

Here’s the graph the Fox News article was talking about:

See the difference?  It’s in the notes.

Men and women differ when the response is “one of the most important things” but not when you include the next answer down….”very important”.

So the big culture strike is men moving marriage from “one of the most important” things to a “very important” thing.  That’s not nearly as sensational as promised.

I’m actually curious what percentage of the respondents in this survey were married when they answered this.  For an unmarried person, this could be a bit of a “how often do you beat your wife?” question.  I mean, if you’re not sure if you want to get married would you answer not important?  Because then it sounds like you’re saying you’d be okay with an unsuccessful marriage.  I’m not sure what I would have answered prior to getting married myself….marriage always felt pretty optional to me.  Anyway, now that I am married, I would have definitely answered “one of the most important things”.  If this had been two different questions, I would feel better about extrapolating from the results.

I guess it’s a day late, but here are 4 ways to cook a turkey using NASA gear.

Speaking of crazy uses for things, did you know you can cook fish in your dishwasher?

Alright, that wasn’t math or science related, but this is.  Neil Degrasse Tyson is teaming up with the GZA from Wu-Tang clan to teach kids math, and man, it ain’t nothing to @#$*& with.

Getting ready for Christmas?  How about some Hubble Telescope Christmas cards?

In the post election fall out, no story has hit me as personally as the new media kerfluffle over Marco Rubio’s “age of the earth” comments.  For those of you still trying to tune out, here’s the recap.  Rubio, a Republican Senator from Florida, got asked in an interview with GQ how old he thought the earth was.  His reply heard round the world:

I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries. 

This immediately caused cries of how scientifically ignorant he was, as the correct answer is apparently 4.54 billion years.  Rubio has been accused of putting religion ahead of science, and this has sparked a general conversation about how religious orthodoxy and science are incompatible.  In fact, Phil Plait over at Slate put it this way:

(Highlight in the original)

Now, I agree with Plait.  Science is critical to our understanding of the world.  I started this blog in part because it makes me incredibly sad exactly how little most people know about math and science, and how malleable most people believe facts are.  I think scientific literacy is one of the biggest gifts we can give our children, and obviously I spend a decent amount of my free time trying to promote more critical interpretations of popular facts….and that is where I disagree with Phil Plait and the other Rubio critics.

I think drawing a line in the sand over one specific issue like this is wrong.

I am not a young earth creationist….but I was raised by them.  I’m not talking about my parents either, I’m talking about the 13 years of Christian school education I received, including 7 years of strict Baptist teaching in middle school and high school.  Every science or math class I took for my entire pre-college career was taught by a young earth creationist (or at least someone who had been willing to say they were one).  In this environment, any science class not taught by an avowed Christian was immediately suspect.  When I announced my intention to go to a secular university and to study engineering, I fielded question after question about how I would be able to stay true to my faith while being taught science by those terrible atheists.  I was encouraged to change my choice of school or my choice of major, to change anything, because of the constant assaults on my beliefs I going to have to withstand.  I was told horror story after horror story of Christian kids singled out and flunked for standing up for what they believed in.  A friend’s mother actually cried while talking to me about it.  For a time I reconsidered, but in the end I didn’t change my mind and I went to college ready to face the fire.

Well, the fire never came.

In four years where I barely left the math/science buildings, in four years of biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics and engineering classes, I was never, not once, asked how old I thought the world was, how we all got here, or if I thought there was a place for God in any of it.

It’s not just that no one asked, it’s that it never came up.  I mean, I’m pretty sure in one of my biology classes there was a passing reference to “this is an evolutionary adaptation”, but other than that, no one raised the subject.   We were too busy learning about how to multiply numbers in a matrix or how objects move on frictionless surfaces.  In fact the only time it came up was either when people found out I went to a Baptist high school (“oh, so you were taught the whole earth in six days thing? what was that like?) or when I’d run in to Christians who would want to grill me on how I was being treated.  Ironically, many of these Christians were in the psychology or sociology departments, both of which had professors FAR more critical of fundamental Christian beliefs than anything I encountered.

Over time, I came to be fairly critical of the particular high school I had gone to and the attitude of religious fundamentalism.  It was science, really, that set me free.  The ability to review evidence, to think critically, to decide what is and isn’t a valid source, and a healthy sense of skepticism all moved me away from those people who claim religion mostly so they will always feel sure about everything.  I like feeling unsure.  I like admitting I could be wrong.  I like saying there’s some ambiguity, and that I’ll look in to it independently and form a conclusion. I will always love science for this.

However, when people use science to do the same thing to others that I feel religion was used to do to me, I get upset.  Science should be used to open people’s minds to the idea of evidence based investigation, not to make fun of people because they repeat something they were raised with.  To set the bar at the age of the earth, to say that no one who even questions the 4.54 billion year number is allowed to come in, well I think that ensures that fewer people of faith will even bother trying to enter the sciences.  This needlessly perpetuates hostilities on both sides.  If religion throws down a gauntlet on one side, it’s up to science to sit back and say “no problem, come on in, take a look around for yourself and see how you feel after”.  Science is not an excuse to shove a conclusion down someone’s throat.  Science is a process of teaching people how to reach a good conclusion to begin with.

Getting back to Rubio and his detractors….this is why I can’t criticize the man.  Rubio’s a Catholic, a lawyer, and a politician.  I doubt he’s seriously sat down and studied geology, astronomy or anything else that would help him understand the age of the earth debate.  Additionally, his Catholic faith tells him that many conclusions could be valid (Catholics are not required to be young earth creationists).  So when he was asked a question outside his comfort zone, he said what he knew, admitted his limitations, and said what he didn’t know.  To me, that’s science.

I don’t have any citations to back me up, but I’m pretty sure it’s a proven fact that a belly laugh from a baby is the most amazing sound on earth.

Patrick from ballotlines has updated his predictions about who would have the House if some of the seats were decided by popular vote within the state.  This time he included the potential voters who didn’t vote because the races they had available were uncontested or otherwise not representative.

I always find it interesting to ponder the effects of changes like these on results.  Most of my job for the last few years centered on a project that tried to change behavior of employees by changing the system they were working in.  It’s a fascinating thought project.

I suspect that this fear of the unknown is why we stick with an election system most people barely understand.  My guess is both political parties 9or at least their consultants) prefer small tweaks to the existing rules than a major overhaul to the whole operation.

From datazoid.deviantart.com….quick, some get a kickstarter campaign going to make these real!

Looking for a Bad Data Bad approved Christmas present for a little girl in your life?  Reader David tipped me off to Goldi Blox….a new startup that’s making toys to get girls interested in engineering early on in life.  She had me at “this is the toy I wish someone could have bought me when I was that age”.

Also, are you traveling for Thanksgiving?  If so, you should know that surviving a plane crash is not nearly as uncommon as you’ve been led to believe.

Once you get to Thanksgiving dinner (safely), here’s some fun tricks you could bust out with.  Science.

In the post election dissection, I’ve seen a lot of random correlations, but this one touched my heart.  Apparently coffee won Obama the election.  Of course by this logic, Texas is one of the next states that could go Dem….so take it with a grain of salt.  Or lump of sugar.  Either way, a cute reminder that correlation is not causation.

Speaking of elections, want to remember what the internet used to look like?  Dole/Kemp ’96 is still up (for educational purposes apparently).

This one’s a little different.  I was raised in a home/church community where one of the most enduring traditions of the holidays was a call for giving to those in need.  This year, I decided to give some money through donorschoose.org.  If you’ve never been there, it’s a site that lets teacher’s from around the country submit their “wish lists” for specific education projects they are working on, and donors can fund the project. I (naturally) went looking for stats projects and found a school in a high poverty area in North Carolina looking for some resources to make statistics more real for their students.  They only need a little over $200 more to fund the project, and I thought I’d just put it out there to anyone who might be interested in pitching in.  I have no connection to any of these people, just a random act of kindness thing.  The project can be found here.

The headline right there was my favorite quote of the whole election cycle.

If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10 minutes (assuming constant default probability)?

 Answer will be posted in the comment section sometime on Friday.

In research criticism, it is not an uncommon event for someone to suggest that if something was really wrong with the research, the peer review process would have picked it up.