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Lies, Damned Lies and Cat Statistics
spopepro writes "While un-captioned cats might be of limited interest to the /. community, I found this column on how a fabricated statistic takes on a life of its own interesting. Starting with the Humane Society of the United States' (HSUS) claim that the unsterilized offspring of a cat will '...result in 420,000 cats in 5 years,' the author looks at other erroneous numbers, where they came from and why they won't go away."
When I was a kid, I used to sit there smashing mosquitoes that bit me. Every time I smashed one fat with blood, I relished the idea that I had just killed a female mosquito who was about to lay thousands of eggs. And those mosquitoes would in turn breed and lay thousands of eggs and I had essentially just ended the lives of an infinite number of mosquitoes!
Please, just let me have this -- your environmental constraints and logical reasoning be damned!
My work here is dung.
When you're not getting any pussy.
That just means we have the opportunity to make our own captions!
i can haz kitenz?
Go Go Gadget Pointless Thread:
With all the fucking bullshit that ends up on the front page. All the iPhone astroturfing, all the Android FUD, all the iPhone FUD and Android astroturfing, all the dupes and tripes and all the dopes. All the ridiculous "Ask Slashdot"s that could have been solved with 2 minutes Googling...
This ends up in idle? Mis-reporting of unsubstantiated facts by news-outlets may not be news, but it's stuff that matters, and if ever there was an example of something that shouldn't have been consigned to the idle bin, this is it! Adding some stupid allusion to lolcats does not make it idle-worthy. If someone submitted a story about the pope dying and added "His hat looks a bit like a wang! LOL" does it follow that the story should go on the Funny Pages?
78% of all statistics are just made up.
Pidoma == Pulled It Directly From My... uh... Mid Air.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
i iz in ur mind, reproducing.
People who prefer dogs to cats are 4.8 times as likely to prefer Scotch to vodka, but people who prefer cats to dogs are equally likely to prefer Scotch or vodka.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Actually, if you actually read the article to the end, they do say it applies to just about any kind of statistics. E.g., an example they use is a statistics which supposedly said that men prefer dating secretaries than female managers -- and you can see how that helped fuel that prejudice that women who pursue a that kind of career won't get laid, and probably are cold hearted bitches who don't have time for love anyway -- but then when someone actually got to the bottom of it, the poll didn't actually ask that.
Or you can take the myth that a woman who's not married by 35 is even less likely to marry than to be killed by a terrorist. Not only it turns out it was BS unsubstantiated hyperbole, but the perpetrators actually eventually apologized for it. Hey, better a few decades later than never, right? To get an idea how bogus that was, not only didn't the calculated numbers add up to "less likely than being killed by a terrorist" (they even admitted they made that up for sensationalism sake), but it was based on the critically flawed assumption that a woman would _only_ marry older men. But it's been echoed all over the place and taken for a fact.
And what they say is that basically not only some numbers pulled out of some PR bullshitter's ass get taken for gospel, but basically they become nearly impossible to debunk. You'd have to spend the equivalent of several episodes to debunk one sound bite that takes just 5 seconds to mindlessly repeat all around. And even then, you won't get as much exposure as the mass of idiots repeating the falsehood because they heard it somewhere, and even to a lot of those who hear you debunking it, you'll just sound like some conspiracy-theorist for attacking what they know for a fact.
And I think that shouldn't be dismissed as just some idle lolcat joke. Especially in IT and CS, we see the same phenomenon every day. There are a ton of "X is better than Y" or "A is 10% more scalable than B" pseudo-facts thrown around, that everyone just repeats and nobody questions them.
Especially almost nobody in management who heard it in some IT-for-managers ragazine _and_ from the nice salesman using it to sell his snake oil. So it must be true, right?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I thought it was 79.5%.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Now, if one starts with two cats however, the number could well be higher...
I never, ever RTFA. No, I didn't.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
'...result in 420,000 cats in 5 years,'
420,000 = 42 * 10,000 => 42 = meaning of life
Age to maturity: 6 to 10 months
Litters per year: 0 to 3
Litter size: 1 to 8
so, using a changing multipler for newborns of
year1= 0 to 12 offspring
year2,3,4,5 = 0 to 24 offspring
i get values around
end year1: 1 to 25 cats
end year2: 1 to 300 cats
end year3: 1 to 3900 cats
end year4: 1 to 54k cats
end year5: 1 to 835k cats
So it pretty much stands as a useless range
I just got the results from the latest survey, they say it's actually 103.7%.
Did you find yourself hip-deep in cats the last time you left the house?
If you're a Dorf, you don't even need to leave.
Dude 1: We just got the calcs back. It's about 500 cats.
Dude 2: No way, man! That's like... more than 420.
Dude 1: Wow! 420! (takes another toke).
Dude 2: No way man. 420 thouuuusand.
(both) busted up laughing.
And the next day, they couldn't believe it got into the report, and neither one wanted to explain why, so they just swept that under the rug and ran with it.
Right, and 5/4 people have trouble with fractions....
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
in 5 years, 1 unspayed mouse will have 60,466,176 offspring.
to halt computing is to shackle the mind
Very ironic, considering that TFA was about how bumper sticker phrases spread so much BS.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The urban legend about only uses 10% of your brain is the one that seems to pop up the most, and annoy me the most.
As you are the first to have noticed my .sig, I'll give you the opportunity to tell me where it is from and what it relates to.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If we were still using DDT there'd be no songbirds. Without a billion songbirds to eat those 420,000 cats would starve. As a bonus, without cats to eat the coyotes would starve.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
where it is from and what it relates to.
Doesn't matter: you're using it as a "bumper sticker".
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Slashdot readers aren't immune to this phenomenon. At the height of the Internet Bubble, there was the infamous MCI Worldcom report on fibre backbone needing to double every MONTH to carry the predicted rise in broadband internet traffic. That figure was quoted and requoted in many serious media sources and various blogs without anybody querying it until Worldcom became mired in fraud allegations and bankruptcy. Mind you - many companies (over)invested in capacity and the traffic didn't eventuate to generate the necessary revenues.
No, that's the radio station you heard it on!
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
More Or Less is off air atm, but is a wonderful podcast that is probably best described as "Myth Busters for Statistics". Highly recommended.
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They never (and can't) account for population restrictions. That could include...
Food supply. If there are too many cats, not enough food, some cats die of starvation.
That's a nice textbook analysis of natural limits to population.
But you are totally ignoring the reality of a very specific situation - feral cats in urban areas. What exactly is the natural control at work? Cats are wary, not many are killed by accidents. There is abundant food in an urban environment thanks to dumpsters. Furthermore, cats are great natural predators and left unchecked will decimate a bird population. You seriously think "birds of prey" in a modern city are enough to do ANYTHING to a feral cat population? If you don't care about any other wildlife then ignoring wild cat populations is a great way to see most of it decline.
People taking feral cats out of the population to make fixed house pets out of them.
A really feral cat CANNOT be made a pet. If you get them really, really early as kittens (a few weeks old) you can, but after that - forget it.
Not to mention shelters have to kill plenty of cats that are not feral to begin with, because there aren't even enough people to take cats simply abandoned...
The truth is more of a range but the reality is on the high end of the range, in any modern city. The groups posting these figures may be giving you a number somewhat too high but they are not as far off as you and other people thinking of statistics in simple terms seem to think.
The best solution is to trap cats, spay/neuter, and then release them. This keeps cat populations at a much lower natural limit, as the cats will still keep other cats out of a territorial area but cannot produce new kittens that keep a colony growing and then go out to form new colonies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
if its offspring were to remain unfixed and also bred for 5 years.. could theoretically exceed 500K in about 9 1/2 years with a birth rate of three 4-kitten litters (50% female) per year, per adult female over their respective 5 year breeding period
Ms. Keith is a for-profit breeder. Along with constantly complaining about any sort of law or regulation on the unfettered ability of animals to procreate (whihc would, of course, impact her own bottom line), she loves to rail against pet vaccinations. I do get a kick out of her opening sentence about how she walked out of the house and didn't see any cats. Feral cats actively hide from humans, you fucking moron.
A healthy female cat is going to have a littler every year. A litter is going to be greater than one cat, guaranteed.
The low end of your range is thus not realistic.
To give only the upper end of that range is misleading but not as bad as your range, which hides a real problem by saying that there may not be one.
What you should really do is use an average figure as a base, which is four cats per littler (of course for the purposes of growth you would use something like half that number to account for only the female cats producing offspring).
Also cats can have up to four litters per year. Winter is actually not much of an impediment in urban areas where cats can readily find warm spaces.
So you get something more like:
year 1 - 12 cats, six female. (assuming 3 litters on average with four cats each)
year 2 - 72 new cats, 42 female (leaving in previous female cats)
year 3 - 504 new cats, 294 breeding females
year 4 - 3528 new cats, 2052 breeding females (assumed first six are dead now).
year 5 - 24k cats
The problem is not on the same order of magnitude as the high end, but is probably a realistic model of feral cat population growth. The reality is that in urban environments feral cats really are everywhere. The truth is that controlling feral cat populations does make an impact, if nothing else it helps out other species like birds that cats hunt.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Did their research come from experiencing cat-splosion during a Dwarf Fortress session?
Very ironic, considering that TFA was about how bumper sticker phrases spread so much BS.
The worst were a couple that were popular a couple of years ago:
Obama/Biden 08
And
McCain/Palin 08
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I heard that the African elephant population has tripled in the past six months.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From the beginning of TFA: "The offspring of a single unspayed cat will, within five years, add up to 420,000 cats."
By the end of TFA: "If large numbers of people believe -- and convince public policy makers to believe -- that a single unspayed cat can produce 420,000 descendents in seven years [...]"
Sory.
Norm McDonald once said that you can have people believe anything you tell them, as long as you preceed it with the words "Study shows"... the funny because it's eerily right.
Those are the questions that drove Peter J. Wolf to create Vox Felina, a blog dedicated to examining the basis of claims made about cat numbers and behavior, and debunking those that don't withstand scrutiny.
I believe this is some sort of conspiracy.
Also:
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
They're all out to get me!
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Get rid of cats, period.
Seriously, I can't stand them. They are not a pet people truly love. I don't understand how someone can get a cat and claim to be a cat lover, but then just leaves a cat outside all night digging in other people's yards, making a racket, and f*cking other neglected pets. People like cats because once in a while the cat comes around and purrs and looks cute before the person forgets about it for another week. I have never seen someone leave a dog out to wander around the neighbourhood all the time, unless the dog broke free of their leash or ran out the door unexpectedly, but its common practice for people to assume they should just leave their cats wandering around and leave a little food out their back porch. A pet is something you want to have around all the time, a companion, something you can interact with all the time, not something you just put a collar on and feed and hope it will grace you with its presence once in a while while 90% of the rest of the time its annoying the world and becoming a public nuisance.
And the response to this article is just proof how irresponsible cat owners are. While the numbers are ridiculous and way off base, the bottom line is that people are saying here don't worry, you don't need to spay your cat in general. But if you are just going to neglect your pet and let your cat roam around outside for most of its life then do us all a favour and make sure its not going to breed, regardless of what the real numbers are.
The sexy meme will propagate much faster than the rational one!
How do you get people to listen to the rational answer--especially when the rational answer is "Don't make decisions based on that--I don't know it and neither do you. You're a hazard to all of us while you're flying blind!"
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." -George Carlin
the unsterilized offspring of a cat will '...result in 420,000 cats in 5 years,'
Sounds like an opportunity for a new fast food chain.
And there was just a poll (even posted here on Slashdot) that claimed that iPhone user have more sex partners.
I think there's needs to be a study that shows that 99.99% of all statistics are complete and utter hogwash and we shouldn't believe any of this bullshit.
If we can't believe that one cat can produce 420,000 more cats over the course of 5 years, then maybe we shouldn't believe any other statistic.
Maybe we need a more critical eye towards EVERY number hurled at us in information overload land.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
To me, a .sig/quotation is not a bumper sticker. It's a quote and a quote is a quote is a quote. Nothing more. Sorry to hear you feel otherwise. I'd have used more text, but the .sig field is limited. And, yes, it does matter. If you do not know the context, then you do not understand the quotation.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem with the "lies, damned lies, and statistics" argument is that it leads people to conclude that all statistics are invalid unless they happen to agree with our political proclivities, which is far more dangerous than bad numbers floating around out there.
You see the nice thing about statistics is that when someone fudges something, it's possible to prove that something was fudged. However if you have been trained to reject all statistical evidence, you no longer have any reasonable tools for separating "probably true" from "probably gibberish", which will ultimately lead to you making bad decisions and holding incorrect conclusions.
There's a reason scientists rely on statistical analysis instead of anecdotal evidence from some mouth-breathing buffoon on talk radio.
Peter does a lot of good work cutting thru bad statistics. Very much a feline advocate of the first order and does quite a bit of TNR in his own area.
Indeed, as your score demonstrates, there is also the magic of reading figures: ... like yours, or mine ;-)
"90% of people will believe much more in a statement containing actual figures"
Herve S.
We know what we must now do!
Once it's been said by one person and then repeated by another it must be true.
"Mary was a muthur cat thanx 2 HovurCat"
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.