There's something truly amazing about Uncommon Descent's DaveScot. He misrepresents data in a stupid way, gets caught, gets embarrassed, and then he does it again. And again. And again. It's like he expects it to work this time - and never mind the fact that it hasn't in any of the last 37 attempts. It's entirely possible that he has the same ability to learn from experience as a badly concussed pigeon.
Today's shining example involves a post of his entitled "Voter Preference by Education Level". In this post, he provides a set of statistics involving education level and current choice of Presidential candidate. He posted this, he says, because the statistics demonstrate "that a certain segment of the public veers radically from everyone else and it's the same segment that radically opposes intelligent design."
Here are the statistics, as Dave presented them:
Education: Obama%/McCain%
High School or less: 42/48
Some College: 41/52
College graduate: 46/49
Post graduate: 55/40
Here are the two important words that were included in Gallup's characterization of the data, but omitted from Dave's characterization:
"among whites"
The educational data is actually quite different when the entire population is viewed:
Education: Obama%/McCain%
High School or less: 51/40
Some College: 49/44
College graduate: 50/44
Post graduate: 59/36
Seriously, Dave, did you really think nobody was going to figure out that you weren't actually talking about the entire population of the United States?
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Opposition of Intelligent Design is "radical"?
And check out this winner of a projection:
Well, sure, it completely invalidates DaveScot's point when one includes all segments of the voting population, and not just the white one. But ... could it be that DaveScot considers only the white voters to be worth talking about?
You perhaps hadn't realised that "Lying for Jesus" is only volume 1 of a series. DaveScot has clearly read volume 2, "Damned Lies for Jesus" and volume 3 "Statistics for Jesus".
Apologies to Benjamin Disraeli, Mark Twain and the others who coined the original pithy phrase.
Ah, but Sam C - Dave claims to be an agnostic. His motivation isn't religion - he's just a contrarian who's found his niche.
It's amazing that anyone who supports Sarah "know nothing" Palin could say this:
"The thing is that while conservatives usually pick people by their merit, moonbats pick people by their ideology."
without their tongue snapping off. These people have no shame.
Zeno -
If you haven't done so already, check out some of his more irrational posts and you'll see that your hypothesis is answered.
Wait, I thought Conservatives picked their people by either a)locating the ones who yanked down the class average in high school or b)deciding which one looked hawt in the "small-town-librarian" look.
Sarah Palin conveniently combines the two.
There are three kinds of people in the world; those who can count, and those who can't.
A few percentae points, in a poll, is all that is needed to come to such a sweeping conclusion "that a certain segment of the public veers radically from everyone else."?
Such is the brain power of conservatives.
And were, pray tell, is the data to support the statement, "the same segment that radically opposes intelligent design."?
(And just how does one radically oppose sometin? Are there varying degrees of opposition? Passive or active opposition? Are there violent protests in the streets?)
The worst part of this is to be realized by reading the comments on Uncommon Descent (certainly not an unbiased site given the name).
Including the non-white data doesn't invalidate DaveScot's point, which is that he's being attacked by the educated, intelligent segment of society.
Really: all he's saying is that educated people are more likely to vote for Obama, and that educated people are more likely to disagree with ID (not that that bit is in the data he cites).
Comparing post-grads to all others, the whites-only data gives 55%-to-43% (or thereabouts) Obama approval. The all-races data gives 59%-to-50%, so including everyone only means that the disparity has dropped by 3% (from a 12% margin to a 9% margin).
Coming at it from the other direction, whites-only is 40%-to-50% pro-McCain, while all-races is 36%-to-43% pro-McCain. Another 3% drop.
That said, DaveScot is a tool. Just look at the clarification he makes in the first comment over there:
The numbers just feed that, no matter how you look at them.
Dave has got back to discussing science. He's managed to fare even worse. If you know a reasonable amount about genetics, you'll love this - he thinks induction of the lac operon is the same as evolution of the function.
Actually, with the whole data set the claim that Obama is more likely to be supported by educated individuals is still true. Look at percentages for Obama still increase as education levels increase. It just looks less impressive because all of the data sets have more people favoring Obama than McCain.
I'm not sure completely how Dave justifies connecting "socialism" to voting for Obama to not liking ID. There are certainly elements of the left which strongly don't like evolution and like ID or certain variants thereof (see for example Deepak Chopra).
Apparently David Scott Springer is just too damned stupid to realize that whether it is more education breeds socialism of being a socialist allows one ot get a graduate degree, it makes those that are in HIS camp the ignorant rubes of the nation.
Then there is the little factoid about how Red States are the biggest tax money recipients, have the highest rates of divorce, abortion, etc.
Hypocritical AND ignorant. Davey must be in hog heaven...