On Major Life Decisions

"Everyone I know is getting married or pregnant. I'm just getting more awesome."

~Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother

Okay, hold the phone.  Who told everyone around me that it was okay to start getting engaged and married or popping out babies?  When did I miss the memo on this whole life-changing-decisions thing?

I feel like I've got my life in order when both my socks match and I wake up before noon.  How is it possible that people my age are making these huge decisions about spending the rest of their lives with someone?  Or multiple someones, apparently.

I guess I'm torn, because I've read a number of things about how this generation is wasting our 20s, because we think we have our whole lives ahead of us to make these huge decisions, so it doesn't matter if we don't settle down or figure our lives out.  And I rationally know that that really just isn't the case.  But I don't feel like I'm emotionally or personally ready to start making those kinds of choices.

And I think a lot of this comes down to another big difference between Denmark and the States -- because in Denmark, most people don't get married until their 30s, at least, and most people older than I am are still in college and figuring out their lives.  And I feel like that shouldn't be a crime.  But unfortunately, in our system, it seems like not having everything figured out already puts you behind the 8-ball.

So now I'm suddenly having these visions of browsing the Help Wanted ads and spending my nights searching cheap dating sites (since my broke, unemployed, imaginary butt clearly couldn't afford the good ones), taking care of cats that somehow came into my possession, hoping to figure out my life.  And it seems like it's way too soon for those kinds of thoughts.

I guess I'm just not sure if everyone else is moving too fast or if I'm just going too slow to keep up, but either way, my head is spinning and something seems off.  I really just want to watch some cartoons and play with Legos.

Peter Pan-ing with the best of 'em,
Rachel Leigh

On My Problem with Nate Silver

When you look at this graph, what percentages do you think is being represented?

For the first, it's kind of hard to eyeball.  I'd probably guess about 1%.  But what about the second one?  If you said 50%, then you're probably an average American, and your selection makes perfect sense.  But you're also wrong.  Though my issue is more with the graph than with you.  That graph represents 28%, but appears to represent nearly half.  (For the record, that first one represents .12%.)

At first glance, Nate Silver seems like the kind of guy with whom I would get along quite well.  With a shared penchant for poker and for proving people wrong, and the understanding and admiration for probability and statistics that comes with those things, he actually seems like he could be one of my major nerd heroes.

And because of THAT graph, I find myself exceedingly annoyed with him.  That graph was pulled from Chapter 1 of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise, a book about how bad or poorly-read data can lead to bad predictions.  And in this midst of all of this warning about how when you only choose to see the data the way you want to see it, your predictions will end up being not only wrong but potentially really harmful (this section in particular was on the housing bubble), he chose to use a graphic that was willfully manipulative and presented in a way which fools the average thinker into being a lot more concerned than they need to be.  Don't get me wrong, the fact that the number of securities which failed was 500 times the predicted number is a pretty damning statistic.  But don't compound that with intentionally misleading representation.  You're giving credence to the idea that there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics" in a book that is supposed to be defining the traps that our predictions fall into.  One such trap is EXACTLY what you did just there.  And it's unfair and manipulative.

I have since come to enjoy quite a bit of the book, which I am nearly through, but I can't help but remain hung-up on that one glaring point (and copious typos - did you even HAVE a copy-editor?) and getting really disgruntled about how knowingly misleading it is.

Irritably yours,
Rachel Leigh