Orville Taylor | Too much killing but we kill our statistics, too

Statistics don’t lie but if those who conceptualise them do not put together the correct entity, then we measure foolishness with a big F and combine facts with sheer mockery.

As we reprise the year 2019, and get ready for vision 20/20, it is easy to get cockeyed in this country of ours. We like to quote figures to support or negate the arguments of how well the government has performed and thanks to the festive season, the orange and green tribal flags combine to make good yuletide/New Year decorations.

However, do we understand what we are reading? Or are we like the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:30, who, for want of a better expression, was going nuts before the Apostle Phillip went to him and asked the same question?

Doubtless, the information on violence is alarming. After all, we are on course to have between 40 and 50 more homicides than last year. Yet if we want to know if we have become more or less violent, homicide, though the most reliable, cannot be the only variable. Indeed, attempts at murder and murder are the same crime. Never mind what the legislation says. If the shooter’s ‘hand is lean’ or the victim is frail, the charge of murder, wounding with intent, shooting with intent and attempted murder all shift like a dishonest politician’s eyes.

Therefore, we must take all those additional data which point to someone deliberately hurting other persons, with the possibility of killing them.

In fact, if we think through it carefully, then we realise how ridiculous it can be that one man being upset that another is provoking him, thumps him down and he falls, hits his head and dies. However, in another scenario, another victim gets so many gunshot wounds that he looks like a black pepper shaker, yet he survives and doesn’t even suffer from lead or copper poisoning. One case is chalked up as murder, while the statisticians who are focused on homicides totally miss the sheer repugnant animalistic act of unadulterated malice of the other crime, simply because the attacked person survives.

The statistical dilemma is not limited to deliberate killings by other humans.

Again, we look at the alarming ‘carnage on the road’. With numbers approaching the record 1993 levels of 434, more than 426 and counting road users have lost their lives in traffic related mishaps so far this year. Despite the grand narratives about minibus drivers and the taxi drivers competing with haemorrhoids in causing us irritation, these undisciplined drivers are not the main road killers or road killed.

Similarly, we ‘know’ that female drivers on the whole often need calendars to time them when they are on the highways and left and right are negotiable when they are giving directions. And yea, they are ‘wheel turners’ who are better at driving men up the walls than operating motor cars. Yet, female drivers are far fewer in road crash and other traffic pathologies.

Nonetheless, all these road statistics are useless unless we adjust the data to give a true representation related to: increased or total numbers of drivers, percentage and number of public passenger vehicles (PPV) drivers, number of drivers according to sex and, of course, amount of driving surface and frequency of road usage.

It might seem simplistic but if there are more drivers, more cars, more roads to drive on and more driving time, then the mathematics I learned in Spanish class tells me that more opportunities for crashes will create more collisions. More mosquitoes mean more dengue.

What the statisticians need to do is to show whether or not PPV, females, or other road users are involved in disproportionately more incidents than their percentage in the population. Women comprise 14 per cent of traffic fatalities; are they more or less than 14 per cent of the driving population? What percentage of the driving public are motorcycle users? Without these details we cannot even tell if proportionally the number of accidents is decreasing.

DIFFICULT TO MEASURE

Some statistics, like corruption, are difficult to measure. My position regarding the corruption perception index is well known. It is a useless statistic because it measures what people feel is the level of corruption, rather than actual corruption. While there might be some correlation, it is natural that in a country where the press is free to highlight every speck of governmental wrongdoing, the public will easily have such perception.

My contention has always been that the reporters and public intellectuals need to look at the parts of the Transparency International reports that point to persons indicating that they have actually paid bribes to certain categories of individuals or bodies. Its Global Corruption Barometer attempts to do precisely that.

Then we have poverty, which has been measured the same way since John was a boy. Therefore, if poverty levels increase or decrease, it means exactly that. However, are we not interested in what percentage of the poor is actually employed? Have we seen an increase in the ‘working poor’?

With unemployment figures, the devil lies in the details, although I don’t know him. Are more persons actively seeking or less desirous of work? If they lose the desire to look or accept work, then the statisticians remove them and thus, the unemployment figure decreases. Furthermore, if employment levels increase but the quality of work, the number of hours and other variables which create ‘decent work’ decline, then the figures mean zilch.

Finally, economic growth is always a good thing. Yet, if we have growth and only Dives eat but none of the blessing falls off the table on to the right hand of the working class, then there is no prosperity. Our history is full of examples when we have increased gross domestic product but no redistribution of the income.

Thankfully, we have these data available and we can make sensible judgements and arguments as we prepare for the political master debates.

Happy New Year and may the above lesson help in improving your 20/20 vision.

 Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at the UWI, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com