{"id":826,"date":"2022-11-14T14:11:41","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T14:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/?p=826"},"modified":"2022-11-29T15:38:42","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T15:38:42","slug":"overthinking-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/14\/overthinking-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Overthinking the question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Tell me if you agree or disagree with this statement:  Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s one of the questions on the General Social Survey<\/a>. In 1974, when it was first asked, 47% of respondents said they agreed. In 2018, the most recent survey where this question was asked, that percentage was down to 14%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week I posed the same question to an audience at PyData NYC<\/a>. Of 56 people who responded, none of them agreed with the statement (0%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, if we take the question literally, the correct answer is “I don’t know”. In fact, it is almost certain that either<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women, or<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Most women are better suited emotionally for politics than are most men.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The reason is that saying that “most A are better than most B” is equivalent to saying that the median in group A is higher than the median in group B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Here’s the proof: If one median is higher than the other, we can find a value between them where most members of group A are higher (by the definition of median) and most members of group B are lower. So unless the medians are identical, either “most A are better than most B” or the other way around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And what does it mean to be “suited emotionally for politics”? I don’t know, but if we had to quantify it, it would be some combination of emotional factors. Men and women differ in many ways, on average; the difference is small for some factors and bigger for others. So it is likely that a combination of factors also differs between the groups. And even if the difference is very small, the medians are unlikely to be identical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So, if we take the question literally, the best answer is “I don’t know”. But it’s clear that people don’t take the question literally. Instead, they are probably answering something like “Do you think men are so much better suited emotionally for politics that they should hold a large majority of positions of power?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I think that one’s easier to answer.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    “Tell me if you agree or disagree with this statement:  Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.” That’s one of the questions on the General Social Survey. In 1974, when it was first asked, 47% of respondents said they agreed. In 2018, the most recent survey where this question was asked, that percentage was down to 14%. Last week I posed the same question to an audience at PyData NYC. Of 56 people who responded,…<\/p>\n

    Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOverthinking the question - Probably Overthinking It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/14\/overthinking-the-question\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Overthinking the question - Probably Overthinking It\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“Tell me if you agree or disagree with this statement:  Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.” That’s one of the questions on the General Social Survey. 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With the rise of the alt-right, Republican control of Congress, and the election of Donald Trump, it might seem so. Or is the country getting more liberal? With the 2015 Supreme Court decision supporting same-sex marriage, the incremental legalization of marijuana, and recent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"general social survey\"","block_context":{"text":"general social survey","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/general-social-survey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/image-4.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":572,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/27\/old-optimists-and-young-pessimists\/","url_meta":{"origin":826,"position":5},"title":"Old optimists and young pessimists","author":"AllenDowney","date":"April 27, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Years ago I told one of my colleagues about my Data Science class and he asked if I taught Simpson's paradox. I said I didn't spend much time on it because, I opined, it is a mathematical curiosity unlikely to come up in practice. My colleague was shocked and dismayed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"general social survey\"","block_context":{"text":"general social survey","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/general-social-survey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/grass_vs_year_by_cohort10.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/grass_vs_year_by_cohort10.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/grass_vs_year_by_cohort10.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":830,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}