The Importance of Personal Experience (+Facts, Statistics and Opinions)

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This is started as a result of an off-topic discussion in the Black and White Thread, where we started debating whether statistics or personal experience was more important in arriving at generalized conclusions. And the end result is the merging with a similar thread started by Nakia.

Nakia summed up one side of the argument nicely with this post:

I responded with:

Spelly answered with:

So – how important is personal experience in trying to come to general conclusions? Should personal experience outweigh statistics? And are their other factors which should be taken into account? And where does it all fit in when developing public policy?

The floor is open…

 

Fact, experience, statistics and opinion

This is a spin off of Black vs White thread which is a spin off of another thread. Which has now been combined with Splunge's thread. Hurray for the new Board.

by Splunge

I disagree. Statistics are helpful in many cases but certainly not 'the only valid basis for making decisions'. Fact, in my experience I do not know anyone who makes a day-to-day decision based on statistics. They may make financial decisions based on statistics but find me the person who got married (or divorced) based on statistics. Even simpler, find someone who makes friends based on statistics.

We are statistics. Law makers and businesses use statistics. Your normal average human being uses emotions and experiences to make decisions. And as Spellbound says I hope they use common sense and a variety of experiences including those of others. Just as I do when I buy a game. At least I try to.

1 + 1 = 10. Just a cold figure. Means nul until I give it meaning.

Now that is my and you ain't going to change me mind.

 

I agree with you, using crude statistical and arithmetics for real life situation isn't an option for me. For instance Given the choice would you save one or a thousand person from a certain death. A pure arithmetics reasoning would choose the thousand, however I couldn't choose either of these. I give human life to much value to considers even a single lost in humans soul.

Edit; minor grammatical errors.

 

As I mentioned in the other thread, this kind of "logic" completely misses the point. A persons dealings with a group of people cannot be extrapolated against a larger whole unless he's dealt with a significant statistical sample. A person who's only dealt with 1,000 black people in his life is not qualified to make generalizations about black people from his experience with them. Not only are his experiences going to be clouded by his own point of view and preconceived notions but there are also over 41 million black people in this country. You can't make an extrapolation about all blacks in the US from your (brief) dealings with 1,000 of them from a single region of the country. It doesn't work that way.

 

And yet, statistically speaking, 1,000 people is probably a statistically-valid sample, provided it's a random sample. Of course, as you've implied, a sample drawn from personal experience is unlikely to be "random".

 

Personal experience is good, so long as you're a wise enough person to interpret what happens to you properly, and come to the right conclusions. Unfortunately, most people in this world are dumbasses, and require people with more brain to tell them how they should react to stuff. We're doctored to a certain reaction-procedure from a young age by our surroundings. Unfortunately, statistics can be used to prove or disprove anything, and are often unreliable in giving a correct answer. I'd say it's mainly a mix of both. This fence is well comfortable.

 

Ahem:

In Nakia's thread, please.

Moderators - please close this thread down.

Edit - Or merging the threads is even better.

 

Drew --

Let's extrapolate this to pit bulls. You're correct if one person is bitten by a pit bull, it doesn't mean that the breed is dangerous. However, If one person meets another person that's experienced that, and then another and then another.....and then reads news articles on it, that perception will surely change. Does it mean every pit bull is dangerous? Of course not. Does it mean that perhaps they have a higher tendency towards biting? I'd say quite probably. People's opinions are rarely based on one experience or event. As you age in life, it's compiled over a variety of experiences, conversations, etc., which ultimately comprises opinion.

As far as blacks abusing welfare -- if you had read my previous posts in the other thread, I made mention that whites do the same. However, in my experience (which helps to form my opinion), I have met many who have abused the system and willingly joked about it. If you think that doesn't have an effect on forming a person's opinion on something, then you are deluded. We are made up of a blend of fact and experience -- to suggest that experience is irrelevant is absurd.

 

I meant to imply even more than that. When making an implication about blacks and their propensity to abuse welfare, just looking at 1,000 black people isn't good enough. First of all, at least 950 of them (assuming you are only drawing from a state like Louisiana, where an abnormally large percentage of its people get welfare), and probably more, are not on welfare, have never been on welfare, and probably never will. So, you're actually looking at 50 people or less. If you find out that 5 of them (10%) are abusing welfare, you've found one or two families at most (since about 80% of welfare recipients are actually children). This is, at best, a statistical anomaly.

@Spellbound: the experiences of hundreds, or even thousands, of racists who refuse to acknowledge the mountains of empirical data (that I'd be happy to link you to) which countermands their (biased) experiences are irrelevant. Do you work for DHS? Do you regularly deal with blacks who abuse welfare all over the country, or just in your neck of the woods? How many black families who abuse welfare have you actually met? Two? Three? Five? Such a small sample amounts to nothing that can be extrapolated across a grand scale....which is why you can't make broad generalizations from your own personal experiences.

 

Man -- you refuse to see the point. I deal with empirical data daily -- and teach statistics for christ sakes. There is no one here who understands more the value of stats AND how they can be twisted to suit a researcher's whim. :sigh: What I'm trying to suggest to you is that you undervalue experience, or rather put NO VALUE on experience and opinion. I recognize the needs for facts, but also recognized that opinions garnered from experiences over many years have value as well.

 

I didn't say that. You did. You've provided no figures to defend this statement, either. You said you looked, but obviously haven't found anything. Has it occurred to you that the reason for that, perhaps, is that it's a stereotype with no basis in actual reality?

 

Thank you, Tal.

Hokay, Statistics: A lot of statistics are based on polls. Polls are based on some form of interview with human beings who answer those poll questions honestly or dishonestly from personal experience. I get a phone call, "We are doing an interview to find if you prefer cauliflower to broccoli or carrots and do you like your cauliflower with or without cheese? etc. My response which I can't print here boils down to "I hate cauliflower." Usually my response to pollsters is "Sorry, too busy, can't talk now."

I have had it explained to me elsewhere that these polls of a few hundred are valid. Hokay, I'll have to take your word for that. Which does not mean I really believe you. Ha!

Now I have lived a long and eventful life. I have lived in KY, OH, AK, CA, Fl, NY, NJ, AZ, WI and I may have forgotten one or two but those are the main ones. The point of this is I have had a chance to randomly meet a lot of different people. Blacks, whites, Indians..sorry, Native Americans, orientals, arabs, Turks, and further more the Internet has broadened my horizons. I have now 'met' folks who actually live in different countries. I have lived in Oneida where the former Oneida Reservation once was. I have lived on a Navajo Reservation.

Based on this I hereby official and formally declare myself a walking poll and quite capable of forming my own strongly held opinions which you may be able to change by carefully reasoned arguements but never, ever, by quoting statistics at me unless we are discussing whether or not I should invest in something.

By now it should be obvious what I consider the most important. Do I really need to spell it out for you? Experience, all kinds of experience, including family, friends, enemies, schools, work, travel, reading, TV, Internet. This is what life is all about not that 7 out of 10 people like that bland, tasteless, white vegie cauliflower.

 

Drew -- I've given you my rationale for that statement and the fact that I don't have hours to spend researching this. Yet you refuse to acknowledge it and keep posting the same statement of mine over and over. Yes I said that.....and a whole lot more in explanation, but you refuse to acknowledge that either. No comment on the pit bull example? I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on this, so I just have one suggestion -- be careful with your data.....and interpreting it.

 

Nakia, that was very well done. Now for my rebuttal.

I’ll give you credit for having experienced life in many different areas in the US. However (and I’m not at all saying that this applies to you), early experiences can very easily form the basis for interpretation of later experiences. Take my dog analogy, for example – my aunt, in her adult years, worries about the possibility that an unfamiliar non-threatening dog she encounters might turn on her unprovoked. I, on the other hand, am likely to go to that dog, offer him/her my hand to sniff, and then proceed to pet it (assuming the sniffing part didn’t cause it to go for my jugular). So the fact that someone has lived in many places doesn’t necessarily mean that person has a realistic or unbiased view on things. (Again, I'm not saying your own observations aren't valid or representative.)

And yay for Tal!

 

Personal experience can make you come to the most odd conclusions and makes you generalize something fierce. You can base my your own personal opinion on personal experience, you cannot base nationwide policies on the same. Especially since our personal experiences are coloured by our previous personal experiences so we are prone to strengthen old prejudices instead of breaking them.

To please Spellbound I am going to adress the pitbull example, I have personally met quite a few very nice pitbulls while I have a longlasting loathing and I wouldnt call it fear but waryness of rottweilers going back to my childhood. Dogs are a very bad example for this as they are nothing but mirrors of their owners, what you could say if you want to generalize and have a bit more flesh on your bones is that many of the people who own pitbulls shouldnt be allowed to own dogs period. If the pitbulls were made illegal those ant hung men and insecure women would go find another breed of dog to give a bad reputation.

I personally have a huge slew of personal opinions based on personal experiences that I wouldnt for the life of me see shared by society as I know on an intellectual level that to do so would be wrong. Even if almost every romani I have encountered have been a thief and/or a drugdealer I wouldnt want them rounded up for the public good.

 

by Drew Bold added by me.

If you read Spellbounds posts carefully you will reallize that she has lived in many parts of the country and although she is by no means as old as I am she does have life experience to back up her statements.

Statistics is not the final word. It is a tool invented by human beings and it can be used or misused. Experience covers a broad range of things and varies from individual to individual. So we put these experiences together and come up with a hash we call a poll.

1000 blacks are interviewed or in some way officially counted. Of these blacks 50 or 5% are on welfare. Of these 50, 5% or 2.5 blacks abuse the system. Now statistics uses this information to state that of the 42 million blacks in the USA 2,100,000 are on welfare, of this 2,100,000 5% abuse the system. so 105,000 blacks abuse the system.
Please note that these are made up figures based on Drew's post and are in no way intended to factual figures but merely an example of how I understand statistics to work.

Spell, since I have never taught and in fact never even took a full course in statistics please correct me if I am wrong.

 

The issue in question with that, Nakia, is if in fact the 1,000 individuals are representative of the population. That's dependent on a couple of things -- what parameter you're measuring, what confidence level you want (i.e. if you have 98% confidence level, you're stating that if you repeatedly drew samples of size 1,000 from the 42 million black population of the US, 98% of the values of the sample mean would be such that the true population mean would fall in that established confidence interval) and the level of error you're willing to live with. Sampling isn't an easy thing and has everything to do with the validity of the results. Incorrect sampling and the whole study is trashed.

 

I quite like that, actually. Good point.

But there is a difference between statistics based on polls, and statistics based on more "empirical" evidence, such as IRS data or the like.

As an aside, I really shouldn't be involved in this right now (which is why my replies are kinda short). I'm at work on a Saturday, and it's not because I have to be at work in order to post on SP.

And Tal, your deletion thing doesn't work. I can't edit a post unless the edited post has at least 5 characters.