Online city stat? Don’t track it in the house
If people could just smell on the internet, maybe we’d quit stepping in it so often and tracking it into respectable places.
Take this pile of statistics, which hit Ye Olde Information Superhighway Thursday like road apples tumbling from a horseful carriage loaded with Dr. Johnston’s Superior Malt Extract & Intestinal Evacuant — or some other patent-medicine laxative.
It was that kind of a “reporting” throwback: clean through the 20th century plumb back to the 19th, when every print shop put out a scandal sheet and every man was his own editor.
“The Fastest Growing (and Shrinking) Cities.”
Lists! The internet loves lists! And some lists are informative. Or amusing. Or not.
Must. Not. Sample. The. Snake. Oil.
But I did, and the more I skimmed — and there was barely enough to skim, so little work went into it — the more the perturbation set in. It gave me the bilious headache like it was 1899.
“Cities in the South remain among the fastest growing in the United States, according to statistics released May 25 by the U.S. Census Bureau,” the site reported.
Cities in Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, yada, yada, and yada. Whatever. None in Oklahoma. No
surprise there. Skim, skim, skim.
Skim, skim, skim. But wait. Do what?
“Two of the 15 fastestshrinking cities are in Oklahoma ...” the site reported.
Gulp. And, click, click, there they were, Enid and Lawton.
• 6. Enid, Oklahoma: 12-month population decline, -1.2 percent; population decrease, -600.
Population July 2016: 51,004; median household income: $46,365.
• 3. Lawton, Oklahoma: 12-month population decline: -1.7 percent; population decrease, -1,658.
Population July 2016: 94,653; median household income: $42,493.
Well, maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise, I thought. it just depends on the time frame.
Skim, skim, skim, “Click here to see the methodology.” Ah, a good sign. I clicked on it — but that’s when I got a good whiff of half-baked meadow muffins.
“To identify America’s 15 fastest growing and 15 fastest shrinking cities, (we) reviewed percentage change from July 2015 to July 2016 in the populations of U.S. towns and cities with populations of 50,000 or more from the U.S. Census Bureau.”
In other words, the “methodology” was: “We looked stuff up and ranked it.” They apparently used the word “methodology” to add an air of sophistication in the same way “medicine” added to “patent” gives sundry salves, poultices, tinctures and syrups extra weight.
And like the peddlers of old, they laid it on thick:
“The statistics cover all local governmental units, including incorporated places (such as cities and towns), minor civil divisions (such as townships) and consolidated cities (government units for which the functions of an incorporated place and its parent county have merged).”
Well, yes, that’s what the Census Bureau does.
There is neither news nor opinion in the report from “24/Wall St.,” even though the data gatherer-and-regurgitator, describes itself as a “financial news and opinion company.”
It did pair the rankings with median household income, noting: “While fast-growing cities tend to have strong economies and affluent residents, most of the shrinking cities tend to have relatively low median household incomes.”
Low compared to what? And correlation does not imply causation.
The time frame says it all: from July 2015 to July 2016, the state was in the deep throes of the crude oil price collapse. Enid felt it, like we did. Lawton surely did, too, but that’s not the point.
My point is there was zero attempt to put the population changes in the context of time. Instead, the raw numbers were tossed out there as if a snapshot of a longterm trend of decline.
That’s what they do at the financial news and opinion company “24/ Wall St.,” with reports like:
“America’s Deadliest Cars”!
“The Drunkest (and Driest) Cities in America”!
“The Most Secretive Companies”!
On the other hand, we should probably be glad the reporter didn’t even try. The last time this outfit gave me the bilious headache, in 2011, was with a report that included Oklahoma City as one of “America’s 10 Sickest Housing Markets” when it most certainly was nowhere close.
The statistical analysis was so godawful, the non-causative correlations so brazen, that “report” was a big enough laugh to make a real newsman cry. And cuss.
This latest load just made me cuss.