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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 14, 1975)
dibrio OUi Students' April 1 5 maybe brighter next year jf-rfw '"v "wsrw'" ft tiff f" ff' f ; psri pi II I ! Fjr 1 t a ir -m fi j f .- -Mils v ii a a a we t II iwrvi: Xfi .if l r. . 4 I r -or y--v J Operation Leprechaun April 15, is the day that separates business majors from the rest of humanity. For the student to whom debits and credits have not become second nature, it is the long-postponed day on which he must pit himself gainst tax forms in an annual battle that seems to hoA rmiv nne result: vou owe the government money . Even business majors have been faced with that one. Things may be a bit brighter next year at this time. The tax forms will b; just as confusing, but that old student bugaboo, tuition, may at last do more than drain the bank accounts of every student registered for more than three hours credit. In a fit of madness or perhaps a brief bout with sanity, Rep. Charles Thone has introduced a bill that gives nothing to the rich and actually help the poor, a bill to allow college students an educational tuition tax deduction of up to $490. The man behind the bill is Antony Mark Ruprecht, a Nebraska Wesleyan University professor who wrote the bill and has been in Washington lobbying for its passage. Backing him up are congressmen, college students, college professors and about 300 schools. UNL, Nebraska Wesleyan an.4 Union College have contributed a total of $425 to pay for letters mailed to schools in search of support. Ruprecht introduced the bill becaise of the rising costs of education. Between 1958 and 1968, he says, tuition rose 34 per cent at public colleges and 59 per cent at private institutions. Students suspected that was happening, but it took a professor to come up with the figures. The bill itself is hardly likely to have the rich clapping their hands and jumping for glee through flaming tax loopholes. The deduction is based on a graduated scale, according to Ruprecht, with two-thirds of the benefits going to families earning less than $15,000 a year. Those with an annual income more than $45,000 are excluded. While it may not make students any more willing to make bigger and bigger tuition payments each year, the bill should at least make the whole process a little more palatable each April 15. If you've never seen a form letter written on congressional stationary, it might pay to write to your congressman about HR4727. And who knows, it might do some good. WesAlbers mm fa . fls ak. mi $fiCK, m WE,,. XV J AH, SPfW IS HERE! r i l i : Mimi L,rl. J I jI-t- """ HWI MIIIIMMH llllllilllllilMIWtmilMBMia Public's comprehension delayed by statistics One of the most entertaining frustrations to emeree from our continuing economic plague is the public's increasing inability to comprehend the deluge of statistical information which daily assails it. John Q. Public's inability to understand statistics is caused by two factors. First is the inherent stupidity of man and womankind. Secondly there is both the blatant falsification of information and Umj jack of cuncciii fur the consumer by government, business and other propagandists. For example, let's say I wished to prove that my toothpaste yielded fewer cavities than yours. I would first get a small group of people to keep track of their cavities fqr six months. Then I would change them to my toothpaste. At this time one of three things would take place; more cavities, fewer cavities or about the same. If I get more cavities or about the same I simply file the tests away and repeat the experiment. Sooner or later, Lady Chance will smile and I will have a test group with an Impressive number of fewer cavities. The advertiser docs the rest. " The importance of a small group is best illustrated bv tossing ns"nr Pennie, If wc toss a Pnny tcn times we may get tails seven times. VylSC Jl 1 we stop hcre we couI(1 8ay at our "scientific test proves" that i pennies come up tails 70 per cent of the time. But if we toss the penny 10,000 times we get the more accurate fifty-fifty result. Advertising yields information which, although true, does not tell us anything meaningful. For example, there is a new cigarette which advertises itself as having "over 50 per cent more puffs." The ad does not tell us whether this is so because it contains more tobacco, has a thicker filter or has simply used a different grade tobacco which makes drawing harder. Our' newspaper daily gives us' statistical information like the number of baths we take in a week or the number of times we brush our teeth per day. But who knows such things? According to the pollster who spoke to your roommate, your friend takes a daily bath, brushes daily nebraskan bruce If TP r4 J Ii LwJ his teeth twice a day and reads the Atlantic Monthly. In reality your roommate hasn't bathed in two montlis, brushed in a year or read anything but Playboy since he was 1 2. Indeed statistics about college students and the young, while very popular, can usually be interpreted in various ways. There have been several studies done to show that cigarette smokers receive lower grades than nonsmokers. ine assumption that smoking leads to lower grades may actually be that lower grades lead to smoking. This is called making a correlation, a causation or a post hoc fallacy. Another example of post hoc fallacy is that people who go to college will make more money than those who don't. While this is true, these people might have made more money regardless of whether they attended college. Even nationally read magazines like Newsweek give us information that is either intentionally or unintentionally misleading or useless. Fof examp!e t!ie February 10 issue had a bar graph on the United States budget which, because it was drawn at an angle, gave a visual impression which was greater than the actual difference. The most abused instrument of statistics is not the graph but the word average." This term means nothing if we are not told what kind of average: mean, mode or median. Unfortunately we ure rarely told and hence we remain uninformed. All too often, the only experience people have with statistics is from their newspaper or weekly magazine. Given human nature, however, most people will gladly bore you with their solution to the economic crisis and seem quite able to jump from toothpaste statistics to the Consumer Price Index, all the while complaining that economics is unknowable. -To the person who asked me what I would do if I were Vietnamese and trapped in Saigon. The answer is simple. 1 would go to the nearest bookstore, buy the complete works of Mao ise lung and place them prominently in my home. Then I would drag out my Viet Cong fiag, sit, read and wait. monday, april 14, 1375 page 4
