Jordan Ellenberg writes: Opponents say that statistical adjustment would violate the constitutional requirement of an "actual enumeration" of the population. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in 1998 that the Constitution's language was "arguably incompatible . . . with gross statistical estimates." The sampling adjustment is indeed an estimate of the population -- but so is the unadjusted number, which estimates that the number of Americans missed is zero! To choose the raw count is to be wrong on purpose in order to avoid being wrong by accident.
Emphasis added. There are demonstrably better statistical methods to perform census estimates, and they should be used.
[Hat Tip 2 Terence Tao]
At least this pet peeve only gets tweaked once a decade...
ReplyDeleteI think the author underplays the risk of political/agenda hijinks... The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was that craptastic Lancet paper about civilian deaths in Iraq. Perception is reality, and statistics have gotten a bad rap from a few bad actors. Them's the breaks.
Hi Matt,
ReplyDeleteHijinks are what we have NOW, and statistical resampling is better at the level of mathematical proof.
More - but I have to run now ...