Fixing the Stupid...A thankless task.

Imagine a baseball line-up. Everyone has a batting average, a stat composed by calculating the number of hits per number of times at bat (Actually, you don't count walks or times hit by a pitch or sacrifice bunts, but it'll do for our purposes). Plus, the average of all the players gives you a stat known as a Team batting average. Of course, a player's performance can fluctuate greatly during the course of a season, but the player's average gives you a statistical glimpse of what is going on.

Now, imagine someone approaches the general manager with the concern that their Team Batting Average has been declining. It has gone from .285 to .272 over the last two months. But now imagine the general manager says, "that's ridiculous, our leadoff hitter hitting .305, and our #8 hitter has increased these last two months from .220 to a .255 average. Obviously you're wrong about the Team Batting Average going down.

Can you see what's wrong here?

Or imagine you own a chain of restaurants. Some of your restaurants make money, and some lose money. Your financial adviser informs you that the chain is running at a net loss. In response, you take your advisor to one of the successful locations, show him that it is profitable and declare that he must be mistaken since this location obviously demonstrates a net profit.

In both of these cases, I hope you can see how the General Manager and the Owner of the chain are exhibiting gross stupidity. They are well deserving of a face-palm and possibly being banned from sharp utensils. Obviously you can't look at one small part of a whole and use it's trend to extrapolate the trend of the entire system. A gain somewhere may be more than compensated for elsewhere in the system and lead the trendline in a different direction. Common sense, right? Who would be this stupid?

If you have argued that the exceptionally cold winter and excessive snowfall in the U.S. this year disproves or even brings into question GLOBAL warming, then you are this stupid. (I know Sean Hannity is this stupid, but he's not alone).

Don't be this stupid. 2009 was only the 35th warmest year in the U.S., but it was the 4th warmest worldwide. Global Warming does not just take place in the United States you small-minded dupes.

I tell you this in the honest hope that you, my reader, will not try to use this argument and look like an ignorant ass. If you already understand this argument, please share it with other ignorant asses you meet. Together we can fix stupid in this country if we just believe hard enough.