Not True!
 

USA Today came out with a list of the most corrupt states and the top three are:

1. North Dakota
2. Louisiana
3. Alaska (You betcha!)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...?se=yahoorefer

Illinois is 18th, even got beat out by PA. hmmmm..... Imagine that!

I believe Florida was about 5th or 6th

(remember the chads!)

.

The article only dealt with "number of convictions of public officials" in ratio to the state's total population. It did not go into: 1) the dollar value of the corruption; 2) the effect on the public in the way of reduction in safety or degradation of services; or 3) the number of private persons/companies entwined in the corruption and related convictions of them.

In short, you can make a stand-alone statistic for anything, and it often doesn't say more than it says.

So?
 

:a20: And your point? No one said it did! The things you mentioned were not the focus of the article. :loco:

That's right. The focus of the article was a great example of poor conclusions based on limited data points. I would have hoped that Journalism 101 would have taught the author that an article which provides a "rating scheme" to denote sociological patterns or tendencies based on only two data points is valueless. Apparently, the author never took any courses in Statistics.

The only "point" to the article is that people will believe whatever they want to believe, and if they are exceptionally selective on the data from which they base conclusions, they can never be "wrong." What's sad is when this is practiced in justifying political choices.

It has rained on both Thursdays of December this year in the DC area, but no rain fell on Atlanta. With "rain" and "Thursdays" being the only data points, if I follow the author's deductive logic, then you just can't be in DC on Thursdays in December without an umbrella, but you can go hat-less in Atlanta. That's deductive logic based on two data points.

:agree::highfive:

Hahahaha!
 

Wow! Maybe this will all lead back to Obama and he won't become President!
Hahahaha! :1rotfl: In your dreams guys! :wave:

It never ceases to amaze me how EVERYTHING that gets posted is taken as an anti-Obama comment.

The only thing "in my dreams" seems to be an expectation for rational thought and civility.

This is good, never thought of it like that, but I have said it before. It is a personal opinion when it comes to this subject. Just like SteveZ said, it is all in how you interpret the article. I looked at that list also, just to see what state fell where. But just how much data is included, and what type and where is the infor gathered from. The articles can tell you anything they want you to hear. Just like I am a big fan of Olbermann on The Countdown on MSNBC. I like to hear him tell it like it is. Give you the Bottom Line. Does that make him right to all, No. But I think he has a valid point with all.
I dont see alot of people reading these polls and articles with the intent of validating the data. they read them and say that has to be true, it is in the paper.....

Logic is, hopefully, prevailing again. On reading the article I noticed that the dark blue states were primarily what we refer to as 'red' states. From this I could draw one of two conclusions; (1) Republicans are more frequently convicted for corruption and therefore are more corrupt; or, (2) Republicans go after corrupt politicians and therefore Democrats are more corrupt. As Steve points out, the data is insufficient to allow either conclusion to be drawn by a thinking person.

What is does demonstrate is that journalists will do anything for a story. It does not matter if they are representatives of the tv news networks, USA Today, the NY Times or the National Enquirer. Printing a story like this, thrusting a microphone in the face of Rahm Emanuel, stalking celebrities and even destroying the lives of everyday people is always worth it if you can 'get the story' and 'get the ratings.' It is no wonder that newspaper circulation is going down steadily (the Tribune Company just declared bankruptcy and the NY Times may be close behind) and that the most watched news show on television is Entertainment Today.