Who Can Read?

I tend to try to get something out of tables and statistics beyond the obvious. Looking at a listing or ranking based on some criterion, I'll often ask the tough questions about whether what I'm seeing is telling me something valid or not.

In my state government class the textbook bemoans the fact that Texas ranks in the bottom five states on per-capita expenditure for education. Oh, woe is us! But, does that tell us anything? Does spending more money per student make the education better? If so, then Washington DC or Chicago IL ought to be hot-beds of intellectual prodigies in their public schools. That isn't even close.

Or, can we compare costs of a school, staff, equipment, etc. in Texas with high cost-of-living areas like New York, Massachusetts or California? You would have to pay a teacher twice as much to live in those areas, hence costs of education are not going to be comparable.

Take a look at these numbers and see what you can deduce:

Declining Circulation Plagues Newspapers

Here's what I got out of that:

1. The Wall Street Journal circulation is equal to the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times combined!
2. Except for the WSJ, which has a statistically insignificant drop in circulation, all of the other papers with huge losses are liberal.
3. My local, the Dallas Morning News, has lost nearly a quarter of their circulation during the reporting period which coincides with a 40% increase in subscription prices.
4. Second to the WSJ is USA Today, a comic-book of a newspaper that features pictures and color rather than required reading.
5. If the conservative vs liberal bias of the list holds true, more conservatives can read and are interested in what is going on.
6. If the drops in all of those liberal newspapers are reflective of interest or involvement by ideology, the 2010 elections might be brighter than we have been hoping for.

Or, maybe the numbers are simply telling me that people don't like ink on their fingers and are getting their information online.