the Fun of Statistics

According to a Gallup Poll thirty-eight percent of Americans report that they believe it is morally wrong to engage in premarital intercourse. However, depending on which study you use, 90-95% of people have sex before they get married.

For some kind of juvenile reason, I love these kind of statistics.

Another favorite is that the Red Sates (aka Republican, protector of family values) have the highest rates of on-line pornography usage. How can that not make you chuckle?

And divorce rates are highest in conservative Fundamentalist churches (where the women obey the men etc...!)

And Utah has one of the highest rates of white collar crime--because the Mormons trust other Mormons so much --but apparently some of them aren't as honest as the clean cut image would have you believe.

When the "high and mighty" or self-appointed judges of the rest of us fall short--it makes me happy. I want to say, "nana, nana booboo".


But, I'd hate to seem less mature than my 50 plus years should have made me. Josh Billings, a humorist and writer, second only to Mark Twain in the late 1800's, wrote "I don't never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, but to keep other folks' straight is what bothers me." Clearly, Mr. Billings could have been talking about me and a lot of other people. Still, makes me chuckle but I'm aiming for a more mature sounding chuckle.