Can anyone spot the problem with this story?
Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 4 months ago to News
Another instance where understanding statistics is critical.
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You can't understand what 10% blacks cut versus 5.6% whites cut means without understanding the starting point.
Just for sake of argument, say you had 80 white Majors and 20 black Majors.
Dismiss four each.
You just dismissed 5% of the white Majors and 20% of the black Majors.
You dismissed equally...or did you? Not if you want to be a race-baiter, I guess.
You might just as well ask if black Majors are bigger screwups since a higher percentage of them had bad reports.
Or is the military racist for giving them more bad reports?
Or maybe the opposition in Iraq and Afghanistan are racists because they're shooting our white majors more than our black majors?
Or maybe our black majors are better at evading bullets?
Or maybe our military is racist because they're deploying more white majors to the front lines?
You can do all kinds of stupid with statistics.
By not identifying the number or the original makeup, we have no way of knowing the true numbers being sent pink slips. Had there only been one black major, and he was selected to be eliminated, that would be 100%.
This is pure race bating, plain and simple.
In reference to the article on 5 Aug. about the reduction in force for Majors in the Army. The data presented does nor provide sufficient information to make an informed evaluation of the actions. Without knowing the actual numbers of whites, blacks, Hispanics, etc. that have been identified for reduction it is impossible to determine if there is any issue. By stating only that X% of the blacks were identified for reduction, without knowing what proportion of the overall reductions or the overall force this represents, the reader is left with an incomplete understanding of the true situation. For example, if there were 10 blacks in the total force of majors, and 4 of them were identified for reduction, that would be 40%. But in the context of several hundred being reduced, this would be a rather small overall percentage.
The way this was presented was, at best, very poor reporting. My fear is that it was intentionally portrayed in this way either by the reporter and/or editor as an intentional attempt to race bait. Unfortunately, the Army Times has been reduced to a point where there is little independent reporting and they only carried the USA Today story, so it was impossible to get a realistic understanding of the actual situation.
A better question would be why are we riffing people still deployed in a combat zone?