Today's Statistical Analysis:

First: some housecleaning. When the phrase 'Its absence proves the negative' was used in the last post, it should have been rendered into Latin, as it is a scientific law among statisticians.
So, suus absentis probo infitialis shall be the motto, or at least a handy explanation (I am fond of our current motto, 'Everything you suspected is true', because it is, and there is comfort in such notions) for much of what we know and find. Please make a note of it.

HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE FOUND TO CAUSE CRIME! We here at the Bureau generally eschew political "hot potatoes", as we find such things distasteful. That said, we have uncovered some astonishing new statistics that happen to intersect with a topic much in the news today.

An issue that has been repeatedly raised in the last several election cycles has been whether or not homosexual marriage being recognized by the state is per se injurious to the state. The arguments supporting the view that it would be are religious in nature, and therefore cannot be proved or disproved. What few non-religious arguments that have been forwarded have been proved to be religion-based, ultimately, when not entirely incoherent: "Opponents say same-sex marriage would undermine traditional male-female marriage, rendering men and women interchangeable and destroying the connection between children and marriage."
So far, no noteworthy civil or legal argument has been put forth, the terrifying specter of interchangeable men and women to one side.

It hasn't been scientifically explored at all, but the possibility that homosexual marriage might be good for society certainly looms in the absence of any evidence of it being bad (or, suus absentis probo infitialis). No evidence, that is, unless one considers the overwhelming disapproval of God, though that entity is impossible to subpoena, and can't be held to damages.
In fact, through the science of statistics, it can now be said to be certain that it wouldn't be a bad thing, since those who say so cannot prove their case. Ipso facto: Gay Marriage Is Good!

So the unexplored territory is: does this de facto mean that heterosexual marriage is harmful to society?

Damage to society is measured by crime, death and damage to infrastructure. Statistics on longevity vis a vis marriage are often published, with marriage and good health inevitably linked (source: any daily newspaper, every six months or so).
(Troublingly, it would seem that the article cited actually contradicts this belief, even employing the phrase "no warrant for the current belief". However, the article is from February 1875, and certainly we have had some scientific progress made since then. Additionally, everyone thinks this is true, so it is.)

No numbers are currently extant as to sexual orientation/marital status regarding impact on roads. One may assume that the numbers cancel one another out, until you consider that while homosexual couples may adopt children (in some states), they still do not have the ability to breed incontinently, whenever they feel like it, populating the landscape far and wide with their issue. Big families need big vehicles, big vehicles are damaging to roads, hence: heterosexual pairings damage infrastructure!

Now, the crime statistics are more difficult to parse. Our colleagues at the Department of Justice (though we are not, strictly speaking, a governmental organization, they are our allies in science) responded by playfully attempting to drown us in information, like spiteful prosecuting attorneys.

Our initial query was ;

I am seeking some statistical data for a research project
regarding the incidence of violent, drug-related or
molestation crimes (or any crimes including fraud,
confidence schemes or stalking)
committed by offenders who were in
heterosexual marriages at the time.
I suspect that the numbers are available.
Thank you.

And the reply was;

The questions you ask are very broad, and
not specific enough to give a you a concise answer.

Then they proceeded to list no less than thirty possible resources, with the possibly smirky phrase, "I hope this was helpful and thank you for asking BJS."

But the problem with all of the reference wells was that they seemed to do statistical analysis on anything but marital status. The Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report for 2008 as aggregated by the FBI has many categories, such as:
Percent Change by Population Group
Percent Change by Geographic Region
Percent Change for Consecutive Years and
Offenses Reported to Law Enforcement by State by City 100,000 and over in Population


None of which are helpful to this office. The National Criminal Justice Reference Service, on the other hand, was potentially more helpful in that it showed conclusively that marital rape is 100% caused by marriage. (And it might even be probable that marriage causes suicide.)

Another study is more of a wash, although including the perhaps-telling phrase, "marriage...may simply be another indicator of social irresponsibility." And this DASIS Report paints a positively rosy picture of marriage re: marital status and substance abuse treatment admissions for 2005.

But this detracts from the original hypothesis, which is that things like spousal abuse, child abuse, "accidental" shootings and the like must per se happen with greater regularity among The Married. And from there one may note that the percentage of married adults in the United States probably dwarfs the number of unmarried adults, so therefore more of The Married are criminals. Alcohol abuse and related crime is almost certainly high, knowing what we know of marriage.
The overwhelming number of crimes committed merging with the enormous number of marriages would seem to more than prove the original hypothesis, but the scientific community at large seems mum on the subject. When they can be roused from their slumber at all, it seems that they inevitably croak something about how prisoners who want to visit with their families do better somehow, and when they note the large number of married offenders, they say that those marriages are unhappy, and criminals tend to marry other criminals anyhow.

So it would seem that the verdict comes by dint of conspiracy: heterosexual marriage causes crime, and perhaps even more so than we are being told.

Since all society is plagued by crime, it might be a bit disingenuous to point in only one direction, of course, and one wonders what dangerous forces might be unleashed by doing so. For instance, God cannot be sued, but can God bring suit for libelling His favorite social institution? This office awaits a reply.

Today's statistical analysis:

43% OF ALL STATISTICS MADE UP ON THE SPOT! As is posited here, in this blog. Well, 18% of what they had to say on a specific topic concerning their target audience, and they fully admit it. Well, as we say in the statis-teering business, its absence proves the negative.

PAY OFFERED VERSUS PAY REQUESTED: A focus group convened recently, sponsored by a local market research concern. The participants were given one hundred dollars and all the beer they could drink. An informal poll conducted after the official polling suggested widespread satisfaction.
The next day, an ad was posted on Craigslist by this office. It read "PAY ME ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND GET ME DRUNK". That was all; nothing was promised by this office to the potential benefactor (though that certainly didn't prevent several of the respondents from assuming something else), short of an evening of conversation.

Somewhere in the ninety percentile responded positively to this happening in their lives (being given 100 USD and unlimited alcohol), while only a paltry 13% responded positively to this idea (giving someone else 100 USD and ulimited alcohol) being presented as a suggestion in a public marketplace.
Specifically: if people are enticed toward (say) a focus group with this tactic, the result will be overwhelmingly good for the party attempting to raise interest. Inversely, just putting up an ad on Craigslist in which you request that someone do this for you seems to have almost no interest generation, except among some groups who need more study. This was surprising.

'MILLENNIALS' MOST DIVERSE GENERATION! There has been an ongoing controversy surrounding this statement since it was made on Sunday, March 8, 2009. (Specifically; "As the most diverse generation to hit adulthood in this nation, we are used to recognizing and celebrating our differences.")
How to prove or disprove such an extravagant claim was discussed at length. Criteria needed to be determined.

A 'millennial' (also known as Generation Y, generally said with a slight whine, as in 'whyyy?'), at least has a concrete definition: one born between 1975-1990. It does not mean 'anyone born during a thousand-year period', i.e. everyone.
It seems that all of them are from the United States, though literally this definition would extend to include someone in their twenties-to-early-thirties who is from (say) Guinea-Bissau. Despite this, the thoughts of this age group living in the second and third worlds are somewhat under-represented, perhaps due to factors like warfare and starvation.

Since diversity itself is a highly subjective criterium, it pays to stick to sheer numbers, wherever possible. By the yardsticks laid out by the scientist/author quoted above, 'millennials' (again, as delineated from denizens of other millennia, or even those also living in this millennium, though not in said age group; it is important to be scientifically accurate):

• are of several minds concerning issues of faith
• are likely to work a low-paying job in the hope of attaining a better-paying job
• drink either in moderation or excess (op cit.?)
  
• were raised on 'Sesame Street', by Vietnam vet (or "Baby Boomer") parents (or "our shared love of Sesame St and other national media efforts aimed at us")
• are somehow more adaptable to the change that is an inevitable constant
  
• consistently refer to themselves as 'us', as contrasted with an easily identified 'them'
• have remarkable ideas concerning biological determinism

[Further yardsticks as elucidated by the scientist/author:
"our selfishness and unfounded feelings of entitlement
our liberal-leaning social politics and our social activism
our understanding, use, and abuse of digital technology"
(This office feels that this post will go on long enough as it is, without having to delve into the sticky issues suggested by that first one.)]

While the numbers for any one of these items may seem hard to come by, in fact they run exactly like this:
Confusion about religion & faith-based issues- Millennials: 100%; rest-of-world: 100%= no diversity points.

Numbers are not available for the amount of people who started out in low-paying jobs, and attempts to do any serious demographic survey were met with negative responses, to be polite. However, by any anecdotal yardstick, this office feels it's fair and accurate to say- Millennials: 100%; rest-of-world: 100%=no diversity points.

Drinking alcohol, in societies that permit the drinking of alcohol, is a personal choice ranging from not drinking alcohol to drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. Some choose to drink moderate amounts of alcohol. Since no millennials were cited in the study who abstain entirely, we may conclude that all millennials drink to the same degree. This makes them quite different indeed from the rest of the world, which boasts a significant number of people and even a representative amount of societies who do not drink at all. Diversity points: 50.

Only some can claim to have been raised since 1969, when 'Sesame Street' first began broadcasting, or since 1959, when the first advisory troops (from the United States) went to Vietnam, later to raise children.
So the numbers would seem finite, until one considers that the subcategory 'Vietnam vet' includes several generations of Frenchmen, Japanese and countless more Chinese. In this, the millennials are dwarfed by the sheer scale of world history, and the extreme population curves it produces. Diversity points: -50.

It is even less easy to determine the numbers (soberly measured, anyway) of people who use the bifurcation 'us & them' in their daily life as contrasted with the use of this phrase among those who, somewhat unfairly, claim an entire millennium. It would seem again that history has produced large numbers of people who would use this somewhat limited view (just imagine how many people have sung along to the Pink Floyd song of the same name!), doubtlessly dwarfing the finite number of people born between 1975 and 1990. Diversity points: -100.

But the ideas concerning biological determinism contained in the above-cited essay (and the fanciful language employed in making the argument) cancel out all other considerations.
If any arbitrarily determined 'generation' can claim to have even one person espousing views so openly bizarre and at odds with the whole of human society (i.e. women cannot be priests in the Catholic church because they can give birth to children, and men can become priests because babies die), it deserves One hundred diversity points.

Which leaves them, all totalled, with fifty points left over. This makes them the winner, as no other generation seems to have ever claimed to be the most diverse.
Although, the generation two above them has been said to be "The Greatest", which would be interesting to attempt to prove. Perhaps tomorrow.

Today's statistical analysis:

HAT USE IS UP 4%! Source: The American Hat Institute.
Also, the claims previously made by the brewing industry that "Beer Is Good" (and, strangely, "Life Is Good" according to one particular beer manufacturer) continue to stand, despite some heated debate on the topic.

On physiognomy and nomenclature:

ALL PERSONS NAMED 'TED' ARE STUPID! According to a source close to the General Accounting Office, it has been determined recently that all persons named Ted are stupid, which has been the privately held view of this office for years. The numbers, apparently, are overwhelming.
Issues of confidentiality and national security prevent us from revealing the source, or even the methods used to achieve this finding. We apologize for this.

LIMITED NUMBER OF FACIAL TYPES FOUND IN PERSONS NAMED 'BOB'! Science is not to be argued with. It has formulae that have been honed and sharpened over the millenia, and as long as one sticks to empirical criteria, one may never be wrong.
An online aggregator will have distilled information from every information source that is of any relevance. Its reach includes the world at large, or that which has ever been recorded anywhere, which is -for the scientific profession- all that matters.

And so we are proud to release the final numbers on the facial types available to men named Bob. Thirty. Source: Google Images.
Strict parameters were observed. No Bobbys, Robs, Roberts, Billy Bobs or bob-style haircuts were permitted. Inanimate objects that could be described as a 'bob' or 'bobber' have also been excluded.


Here is an example.

Below is another.


































'YELLOW' NOT YELLOW! A stunning reversal has been recorded in the annals of the naming of things. A freight company stationed somewhere in the western hemisphere has decided to overturn centuries of color-recognition with what could only be described as a cognitive coup:

That which is said to be what it is, is, according to tradition. The fact that this has been somewhat brutally cast aside by Yellow Freight Lines, with its conspicuously orange logo, is strange.
Times before in history that this has happened: none.
Possibility of recurrance due to precedent: high.

This perversity also extends to their motto:
Yes you can creating?
This sinister turn of events has been noted, and future incursions into the fabric of perception itself will be carefully tracked.