Statistics

I was reading this week's Newsweek over Shabbos. They had a blurb about how a majority of Americans viewed sex as a religious, spiritual experience. I was surprised at the statistics quoted, for several reasons, including that I think many people just don't view sex as a religious thing at all, and I was surprised at the high numbers quoted because I see such a retreat from religion in most of the Americans I meet.

Then I looked a little closer at the article. Being a student who went through a rigorous statistics and research program in undergrad, I was taught to look very critically at statistics. The article was drawn from an online survey on the website Beliefnet. So, basically, good reasoning for the statistics quoted in the article is the fact that those who went to that site are interested in religion to begin with, so the numbers quoted are quite biased. Additionally, they did specify that these were numbers of Americans; however, there was nothing saying if the website made any kind of screening to make sure that the respondents were, in fact, American, when the truth is, anyone in the world could have completed the poll.

So, basically, when I looked at the article a little critically, it was full of holes. Good lesson.