Suburban Living Less Healthy

Dick Durbin wrote:
Blair P. Houghton wrote in message
...

Sorry. Fumblefingered. Thought "management" halfway
through typing "operations research" because it's the
scientific half of organizational management.

That makes more sense. I was wondering what I was missing. My point
is this: Why not use available data that needs no interpretation?

There is no data that needs no interpretation when it
comes to subjective opinion.

The only data that count are the expression of the opinion.

Then you make an estimate of behavior.

--Blair
"Or turn and run."

Blair P. Houghton wrote in message .. .
That makes more sense. I was wondering what I was missing. My point
is this: Why not use available data that needs no interpretation?

There is no data that needs no interpretation when it
comes to subjective opinion.

The only data that count are the expression of the opinion.

Then you make an estimate of behavior.

We aren't talking about behavior here. We are talking about objective
facts: Do suburbanites have a higher incidence of a given range of
medical maladies?

Dick

On 7 Oct 2004 04:01:00 -0700, (Dick Durbin) wrote:

We aren't talking about behavior here. We are talking about objective
facts: Do suburbanites have a higher incidence of a given range of
medical maladies?

If you want to jump to conclusions, fine. The problem is that the
first jump is usually wrong.

If people that live in the surburbs have a higher incident of medical
maladies, then the next and necessary step is to see if it is directly
related to living in the suburbs or is related to another, several or
many other issues that may be highly correlated to people living in
the suburbs. That would not necessarily prove the subject line.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

Dick Durbin wrote:
Blair P. Houghton wrote in message
. ..
That makes more sense. I was wondering what I was missing. My point
is this: Why not use available data that needs no interpretation?

There is no data that needs no interpretation when it
comes to subjective opinion.

The only data that count are the expression of the opinion.

Then you make an estimate of behavior.

We aren't talking about behavior here. We are talking about objective
facts: Do suburbanites have a higher incidence of a given range of
medical maladies?

Then there is no problem. A survey is sufficient, and the
known tolerances of survey methods can apply to the collected
statistic.

The complaint reduces from "survey methods are useless" to "survey
methods have a larger margin of error".

--Blair
"Plus or minus your getting the point."