Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: random

Fun with scary statistics for parents!, MSNBC style

Not terribly egregious, but MSNBC had a graphic that I think misrepresented what they were reporting.  They report that sledding results in 20,800 visits to the emergency room every year in the U.S.  And then they display this graphic:

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Full video here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/40839408#40830663

So this would indicate that 34% of the 20,800, or 7,072, were “Head Injuries” and 9% of that number, 1,872,  were “Traumatic Brain Injuries”.  However, the voice-over says that “9% of those [head injuries]” result in “Traumatic Brain Injuries”, which would actually be 637 instead of 1,872.  The two percentages should probably not be presented side-by-side, as they are.

Granted, I don’t want my kids to be one of those numbers, but this news segment could be filed under “even more news to scare parents”, like this SNL skit parodies.

“We begin tonight’s program as we always do, with a story to scare parents.”

What's your first thought?

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I would suspect the thought of the person who created this (and shared this) was something along the lines of, "You believe in God?  Why would you believe in a deity who clearly dislikes people?"

However, my first reaction to it was, "Good!"  I would hope that the God of the universe is dictating when people should exit this little blue orb, otherwise it's a pretty wimpy God that I would rather not have anything to do with.  In fact, more disturbing to me is that anyone other than God (in this chart, Satan) would be responsible for, or have at least allowed/known about/been able to prevent, anyone's death.

I have a lot more thoughts on this, but just wanted to throw the question out there for now.

Somewhat related: I'm currently reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller (I'm a third through it), and it is excellent.  Will probably write a review in the near future.  His book is all about Story...in our lives.  In real life, as opposed to what we see on screen or read about.  Here's a quote I like:

When we watch the news, we grieve all of this [unjust tragedy], but when we go to the movies, we want more of it.  Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.  We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.

If you want to learn more about the book and hear the opinion of a far more prolific book reader than myself, you can check out Chris Brogan's video review.