xenoargh said:
Yes I would say that statistic has meaning. Stepping back a bit, I think you're confused about what a statistic is, in particular what the forum male to female ratio statistic means. You're arguing from a strawman, the statistic doesn't say what you think it is trying to say, all statistics are are data from the specific environment from which it is gathered, and though not perfect or definitive, it is tangible data.
Look... data is only useful if it's meaningful.
I believe a more fitting word would be comprehensive rather than meaningful.
That's why there's a whole science devoted to polling and using statistics correctly. The data you've cited is not at all meaningful- i.e., we do not know the sample size, the number of respondents that choose not to answer the question at all (my guess: the majority), etc., nor whether they're being honest or not.
The problems you mention happens to all statistics. Apart from the Canadian statistics in which all people have to fill out, there really isn't any statistics that poll everyone or anything that can be said to be a significant portion of a population. Just as you cannot ensure that everyone fills out the profile gender selection, you really can't ensure that everyone that participates in a psychology poll or a marketing poll ensures that everyone that is approached fills it out. The only difference between these two is that the forum one is presented to the entire demography when marketing or scientific polls aren't.
When you put posters up around town inviting people to take a survey, it's guaranteed that some people who read it will decide not to come, yet this by itself isn't a strike against the survey, you have to demonstrate why the people who avoided the survey will vote in a completely different manner than those that decided to take it.
As for honesty, how is this unique to this specific statistic? With all due respect, how can you make sure that everyone is answering honestly? Simply sending an investigative team to inquire into every participant is a little unreasonable is it not? I think that you should take it at the person's word given that you have no reason to distrust it. In fact, I think this is the default position when you know nothing about the demographic at all. What is your justification to suppose that the people who did not fill out their gender box will be of a significantly different ratio than those that have filled it out? Simply saying we don't know and should withhold judgement just isn't good enough in this case since it isn't ll that weird to suppose that the people who filled out the gender box aren't all that different from those that haven't.
Really you're saying that a statistic can't have any "meaning" if it does not poll everyone, or everyone above a 50% margin. Your attack on this statistic, that it may not be filled out by everyone, is precisely what statistic do. It samples the population with a few numbers and extract it to the whole. You can't really know what is the exact male to female ratio on earth, but we do have a statistic we call accurate even if we haven't polled everyone alive at the moment.
You'r attack on the honesty of those filling out the box is, too, unjustified. Do we ask this question when we're collecting answers from people who are being polled on their political allegiances? Do we ask this question when they give answers to what they think of abortion? Do we ask this question when a parent tells you how many children they have?
There are circumstances to doubt these, but you have not laid out what justifications we have for doubting the ratio. If I ask a person what their favorite colour is, I would think that the default position would be that I hold this person's honesty on good faith, just as I hold in good faith, your claims that you are a man. I do not presently have any indication that you are lying to me, so why do you think that it is the case that there is a real chance that the people who fill out their gender boxes are lying?
So, your 'statistic' is junk. It's like walking into a store, seeing that they have 10 apples and 1 orange, and claiming that all stores have a 10:1 ratio of apples to oranges. We can't use it as even a starting-place for a meaningful conversation, basically.
No, it's like walking into a widgetypoons building, seeing 10 apples and 1 orange, and claiming that all the other widgetypoons are likely to have a ratio of 10 apples to 1 orange. Considering that we, at the present moment, know nothing about what the ratio of apples to oranges is in whatever a widgetypoons is, this is the only justified claim we can make about the apple to oranges ratio. It is the fact that we have no other information that makes this statistic stick.
The connection between those who don't care to fill up the gender box and those that do aren't different, or at least, you must explain why they are different to posit that there is likely a discrepancy between those that fill out that box and those that do not.
I think you are making an unjustified assumption that the people who don't fill out that box will be different than those that do at this present moment.
Banned
