There's absolutely NO cause for alarm!

By: Joseph Walther

“Statistics show that taking Tylenol^® within the recommended threshold limits does not pose any risks of physical harm.” Yep, those were his exact words. HE (the clerk… I mean store associate) was restocking shelves in the toothpaste isle at a local drug store. HE also looked no older than about seventeen.

If my estimate of his age was correct—I’m sure of it—my belt was 3-years older than HE was!

The customer he was speaking to was a senior citizen, somewhere between seventy- and eighty-years of age. He was wearing a pair of those huge, tortoise-shell eyeglasses, the lenses of which were just a tad thicker than the bottom of one of those old, 7-oz, green-tint Coca-Cola bottles.

This isn’t about the store associate or the customer. It’s about what things mean. Threshold, for example, does not mean what the average citizen thinks that it means. In fact, many people are clueless.

Average is another word that many people don’t seem to understand in critical terms. There are many others, but I’ll concentrate on threshold and average this week.

Misunderstanding either of these, if not both, makes lying like hell with numbers a foregone conclusion, especially when there is money to be made or elections to be won.

Threshold is a physical science term. Biologists have used it for centuries to define the minimum stimulus needed to produce a response in irritable tissue.

Confused? Many are. It’s the misuse—sometimes blatantly—that gives rise to the confusion. It’s the main reason that advertisers and public relations shysters stole it.

For example, every time some oil refinery “accidentally” releases toxic gases, some PR spokesperson quickly tries to explain that the emissions were well within the safety threshold limits.

“There is absolutely no reason for alarm,” they tell us. “We have everything under control and we’ve taken steps to prevent it from happening again… EVER! TRUST us.”

All environmental pollutants have “safety” thresholds. In legitimate science, we define such thresholds as levels below which we’ve not detected any harmful effects.

However, this does NOT mean that exposure at such levels IS safe. In truth, exposures at such levels may BE safe.

On the other hand, it may be a matter of the effects being too subtle, at such levels, to be noticeable. Or maybe the sophistication level of our measuring devices is simply inadequate.

In fact, we may not have a clue for, perhaps, ten or twenty years or so. Think asbestos exposure. Think formaldehyde babies. Think thyroid cancers in children.

Shortly after 1986, radiation releases at Chernobyl gave rise to record numbers of thyroid cancers in children who lived within the affected areas (Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia). But, according to the threshold studies of the time, this was not possible.

Radiation from Iodine-131 released by the accident was well within the safety threshold limits. According to those “experts,” it simply could not have caused the increase.

However, the threshold study never took into account the elevated degree of sensitivity of children’s thyroid glands! Oops! Our bad.

Along this trend, taking excessive amounts of Tylenol can cause liver damage. It says so right on the outer container and, AGAIN, on the container label holding the pills!

But, if you already have a damaged liver, even if you don’t know it, taking Tylenol can kill you. It can kill you even if your dosage remains well within its safety threshold limits, a drug store associate’s advice notwithstanding.

Now, let us get into the wonderful world of supposedly more familiar numbers, even if mass confusion reigns supreme, thus providing for exponential confusion.

First, though, let’s digress for a second and talk about the difference between mathematics and its child by an unknown father: arithmetic.

You may not deal with mathematics. Most normal people don’t. Oh, it’s important enough. Science would be impossible without it. I know that my working life would have been difficult without it.

But, while mathematicians don’t deal much with arithmetic, they still do themselves a disservice.

Normal folks call them “cloud-9” theorists because, in part, they go glassy-eyed over a perpetual debate as to whether humans invented or discovered mathematics.

Trust me, the nation’s banks don’t care. They just want you to pay your mortgage payment on time, in the proper amount, and without the check bouncing.

Also, when you’re trying to measure the proper ratio of ingredients to make the chicken batter, you probably don’t give much thought as to the fact that theoretical mathematicians have calculated π out to ten billion decimal places without seeing a pattern.

No, mathematicians don’t deal much in adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Neither do they delve much into averages, medians, or modes. These are arithmetic functions. Technicians do this kind of stuff.

For others, things like averages (and their cousins, medians and modes), mean little unless they have a direct bearing on their lives. Even then, many people can’t tell what in the hell the numbers REALLY mean, especially when we add the ever so suspicious term, statistics, to the conversation.

Worse, such folks tend to like and believe the statistics they agree with, and discard as suspicious, those they don’t like; giving little thought, or none at all, to the mechanics of the calculations.

A friend of mine owns a production company. He employs 32-people, including himself. On average, not including his take, the average annual salary per employee is $47,231.54 a year.

But, his draw is $600,000 a year. If I throw HIS annual earnings into the mix, the average annual salary per employee is $64,506. Quite a difference, as you can see.

So, which is true? I guess it depends on whether he’s talking to the IRS or potential investors.

I heard a prosecution’s expert witness testify that the chances of another DNA sample matching the one found at the scene of a homicide were 1-million to one. It was in New York City, where the population exceeded 8-million people.

The jury seemed impressed. I wasn’t. With an 8-million plus pool of people, combined with a one in a million chance of additional matches, seven other people could have had matching DNA.

Without additional corroborating circumstantial evidence, reasonable doubt had to be in the preponderance of the jury’s thinking. As it turned out, it was and the jury acquitted the defendant. The prosecutor didn’t like it.

Never take an average at its word, not even if your own mother gave it to you. Ask questions. Ask, “Can we talk? It’s about that standard deviation. Is it high?” Sounds ominous and complicated, but it’s not.

The standard deviation is a measure of by how much the individual data elements deviate from that calculated average. All you need is a simple calculator, the $9.95-variety.

Take each data element. Subtract it from the calculated average. Square the answer (multiply it by itself). Then, add up all of those squares. When you derive the total, calculate ITS average, and take the square root of it. Congratulations! You’ve just calculated a standard deviation.

The higher the standard deviation, the more likely that what you originally thought to be an etched in stone, divine revelation… ISN’T one.

OK, I’m out of here for this week. According to the data I found on a social website emailed to me by a loyal reader, the average male scores, on average, 7-times a week. MAN! I have a ton of make-up to do. I’ll worry about the standard deviation some other time.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.