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        riddles >> hard >> Statistics Lies
        
(Message started by: Ivan on Jan 3^rd, 2003, 1:26pm)

Title: Statistics Lies
Post by Ivan on Jan 3^rd, 2003, 1:26pm

The religious keeper of the web page The Premature Death of Rockstars: http://www.av1611.org/rockdead.html argues that rock stars do not live as long as the general population. He states that the average age at death of rock stars is 36.9 and 75.8 for the general population. What is wrong with this use of these statistics? This is an illustrated example of lying with statistics.

I don't know the answer, but I can think of these possible solutions:

- Rock stars that were rock stars when younger are not included in the list
- This list only includes famous rock stars

Any ideas?

Title: Re: Statistics Lies
Post by redPEPPER on Jan 3^rd, 2003, 4:21pm

How old is rock music? About 50 years old. Enough said?

Age of death statistics are dragged down by the people who die young, and dragged up by the people who die old. But rock stars appeared only 50 years ago, and the number raised significantly with the years. Those who will drag the rock star stats up didn't die yet! They're not taken into account in these stats, unlike those who died early.

For the stats to be more accurate, you either need to take a significative bunch of rock stars not specifically chosen, wait till they all die, and do an average (but don't include any new star to the original bunch!) or you need to wait till the rock star population is relatively constant over a big enough time span (more than a century), just like the American population is.