Palin's Choice for VP

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

I cannot shake the belief that the party elected into government is simply the one who has the best spin doctors.

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I call 'sour grapes', Jimbo - you just want back the times when it was counting that determined the outcome... used to be that statisticians could come up with the result they get paid to come with and now all these spin doctors manipulating the distribution...

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Originally Posted by Hutch

Median is a value that separates the upper half of a list of values from the lower half, I think the term you're looking for is "mean" which is the average so naturally it means that half the people fall above and the other half falls below. As opposed to the "mode" which is the value that occurs most frequently in list of values. If the values are perfectly normally distributed the median=mean=mode.

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Actually you should check your definitions, your statement is wrong, and so is your deduction from the 'mean'.


Mike (Blue), I very much agree with you, but voters activity in US is very very high compared to most democracies, even new ones. The case with the France's latest elections is an exception. In most new democracies (I'm coming from one of them in eastern europe) it took only few elections before the activity dropped under 60%. In the case of my country the first non-communist government lasted exactly 1 year and after two temporary governments the communists were elected back in a landslide with extremely high voter turnout.

Of course this is about the US elections, so back to that. Since every citizen has the right to vote what we see just seems the correct outcome of the system set up this way. I wish people would be less succeptible to manipulations, but from what I've seen so far it's just far from reality. Education helps a bit, I guess, but not all that much - most people seem to vote more emotionally than rationally.

"Mean is the average" if I'm wrong please explain and set me right.

Well, to me the definitions explain it exactly, so I'm not sure how to reword a definition in a way that you would see it... but I find that for many people in US it is easier to understand by example:

the mean of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 140 is 30, the median is 3.

There are 4 numbers below the mean and 1 above it, while there are 2 below the median and 2 above it.

I think this was a brilliant choice. My view is this pick did a great job of giving the conservative base of the Republican party a couple of their top priorities: pro life and NRA, but presents those in a very human package. And at the same time it gives a dynamic reformer that will appeal to reagan democrats not located on the East Coast or the West Coast.

Rather than a rich white male criticicizing abortion, you've got a woman who had a down sysndrome child rather than aborting it, which to me is as courageous as you can get. After listening to most of my didactic holier than thou democrat friends in liberal elite Boston get amnioed to be sure their child doesn't have downs syndrome so they can kill it before it comes out if it tests positive (while they lambast anyone that would use the word retarded - I guess it's ok to kill a fetus as long as you refer to it's handicap in a polite manner), this choice is exciting to me, even though ultimately I do think whether a woman gets an abortion is her call, even if they make a cowardly call.

And the fact that she is NRA because, heck, she hunts moose, is just awsome. Nothing crazy about that. And I think she will appeal to a lot of people for having these values, walking the walk not just talking the talk, and just being "real." And I don't think the Democrats that are shrilly decrying her as an insult to women even understand the appeal hervalues and achievements will have with the Reagan Democrats that live between the two coasts.

In addition to reinforcing the Republican unity, it also delivers a woman that clearly is formidable, having unseated two former governors in aold boy state, jamming down reforms and getting in the face of big business. And she hasn't achieved this authority by riding on the coat tails of her husband (never mind a philandering husband), or getting featured as a key note speaker before doing anything.

And her very presence is a taunt to Obama - sure, go ahead and say she's inexperienced. And yes, she knows how to use a gun, just like those bitter gun toting working class democrats hillary monopolized.

And like all great Republican moves, it infuriates the liberal elite. :tu

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Originally Posted by gugi

I call 'sour grapes', Jimbo - you just want back the times when it was counting that determined the outcome... used to be that statisticians could come up with the result they get paid to come with and now all these spin doctors manipulating the distribution...

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You are probably right Gugi, although I for one wouldn't call anyone who came up with a result they were paid to come up with a "statistician". "Analyst", maybe... :shrug:

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Actually you should check your definitions, your statement is wrong, and so is your deduction from the 'mean'.

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Gugi is right - it is the Median which, by definition, has half the observations below it and half above it - I thought Jockeys was making a joke about the bleedingly obvious type statements made. A sample mean is basically an equi-weighted sum, which will only be equal to the 50th percentile if the sample data are symmetrically distributed. But you are right that median=mode=mean for a normal distribution :)

James.

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Originally Posted by Hutch

You talk of "personal responsibilities" yet you make excuses for the state of the electorate. The voters and many Americans have chosen to be ignorant and uneducated, it' not the fault of the school system, the media, the government or anyone else. Personal responsibility begins there, if you aren't educated, get educated, if you are ignorant of the issues, become informed. In all honesty in this day and age its never been easier to get educated and informed.

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Hutch, what woke me was Obama talking about personal responsibilities. I've not heard politicians expecting that from the crowd. I'd say that generally, the desire for those who want to control behavior, is to have us all not question and not act in individual ways, responsible or not. My best example of that doctrine is how Pol Pot manipulated a society to exterminate the majority of the educated portion of an entire culture. Without an educated populace there was no one left capable of differentiating between bad, good enough and better. If there was no one to dream of a better life, the herd simply went along with the murderous masters, who by the way were mostly a few old men and a lot of uneducated but well indoctrinated teenagers who chose to believe what they were told by men with guns.

Maybe it would be best to say that the potential for easy access to information exists, but other conditions can interfere with the willingness to go after it. Choices can be manipulated by any portion of the system including the individual. I'm certain that despite it being easy to get information, there are individuals who attend to learning but never realize that the teacher, political party, government entity or medial outlet are biased and do not fairly report their bias or expect the learner to search for contradictions. The learner may simply achieve their lowest level of satisfaction and stop seeking more information because they are comfortable with what they know, even if that knowledge is incomplete. In the Khmer case, survival meant that knowledge was death, personal responsibility was death. It's not so easy is it?

I agree that choosing to be ignorant is a sad state and personal responsibility is a good thing. I'm glad we live in a society that allows us the freedom to choose, the freedom to debate such things, and I'm guilty of changing the direction of this thread somewhat.

All humans are biased, to expect anything different is foolhardy. That's why there should be more than one source, whether be for what you're taught, read, or told. The beauty of education is that it teaches more than singular subject matter, it should teach you how to learn. The populace has become lazy all on its own.

I don't know anyone who's being put to death for knowledge in the US, so pining over the state of the US electorate and comparing it to what went on in Cambodia is really an exercise in excuse making to a monumental proportion.

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Originally Posted by igitur55

Palin was member of party calling for vote on Alaskan secession from US (see article). ;)

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Alaska used to be part of Russia: the czar sold it to the USA!

I bet Putin would love to have it back! She could always become his V.P. if she fails in the US!:D

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Originally Posted by Hutch

Can't you be a Conservative and believe in science? I guess the belief in science now makes one a leftist. Make way for the Jesus horses at the Whitehouse. Now we can ensure that abstinence is taught to all the the children, it seems to have worked well for the Palin's. We can also stop paying them women the same as men, that has just been a pain.

Actually what needed is an IQ test for voters, 51% of americans surveyed think that new offshore drilling will drop the price of gas with in a year, that a statement about the electorate.

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Actually oil will drop in a year. If the US would pass a really comprehensive energy plan it would start dropping before the vote. The price of oil is determined by speculators not the actual cost of production.

Above all, and this is freaking out Left Wingers, if McCain is elected president you are likely looking at the first woman president of the United States!

Have a good day!:D

Richard

That is a scary thought, not for the fact that she's a woman but for the fact that she doesn't have a clue. For the sake of the US if Mc Cain gets elected I really hope he lives a really long time.

Bring on all those talking points.