Comments on: Gasoline, numeracy, and journalism

By: walt

walt — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 21:27:17 +0000

Scott–I would note that “different” means “tougher” in every case I know of. By my standards, that’s a good thing. You’re not going to have one refinery for the entire nation anyway, and I’d love to see a realistic analysis showing that higher environmental standards really constitute an overall waste of fuel. I do find it interesting that “national conformity” is almost always used as a standard for reducing environmental protections, or banking protections, or privacy protections, not improving them.

As for milder weather, true enough–but a lot of cold-climate people use some fuel other than electricity for heating (as do we, for that matter), and I’m not sure you can explain a 2:1 difference that way.

(A lot of us, and “us” does include me, don’t keep our air conditioners on a higher temperature because we don’t have them. That’s a different discussion. California’s really encouraged energy conservation, and the numbers even within California show that it’s succeeded. Not as much as might be desirable, but a lot.)

By: Scott P

Scott P — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 21:06:52 +0000

But the fact that “Californians use more gas than any other state” is also important, because California has different environmental laws than other states. So the volume of gas that must be refined is important when you consider cost per person when the cost of refining gas in California is higher than in other states. It may be that Californians consume less gasoline per capita than inhabitants of 44 other states, but take up more resources anyway because special refineries must be built just for them, which requires manpower just for them, which requires gas for commuters going to those refineries. And it would make sense that California would use less electricity per person if you consider that the weather is milder in big-metropolis California than in big-metropolis other places, whether or not the people of California actually keep their airconditioners on a higher temperature.

By: Kelly G

Kelly G — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 18:21:43 +0000

Those darn statistics!
As somone who used to fall for these statistics tricks, I love Robert Niles’ site What Every Writer Should Know About Statistics.
http://www.robertniles.com/stats/
It provides intro through sem-advanced level statistics. He also points out common thought errors within each of the sections.