The United STATES of America – A Social and Economic Experiment

Many people argue that a particular ideology is better than others because of historical evidence or comparisons with other nations. Though, does anyone find it amusing that the exact same argument can be found on both sides of a debate? The problem with this reasoning is that they are claiming a relationship between a couple variables without accounting for any of the other factors in the equation.  When the majority of factors are ignored in an analysis, the data can usually be manipulated to support any desired conclusion.  It is our responsibility to ask questions and use our own reasoning to decipher between relevant information and the normal junk that is found in the media. 

When trying to understand relationships between certain variables and outcomes, it’s important to keep all other variables as constant as possible.  Even still, the knowledge gained is limited by a defined inference space, but at least this experimental method allows for some sort of relevant conclusion to be made. Without this control method, any analysis of data is most likely worthless! 

For example, while comparisons between the U.S. and other nations can sometimes be useful, it really isn’t a good way to come to a sound conclusion because of the vast differences in cultures and other variables. Likewise, even though we have a lot of data and history found within our country, it’s not always a good idea to compare variables from different time periods. Could you imagine modeling economic policies during a depression or recession around that of an economic boom? Oh wait… We do that sort of thing all the time, don’t we? 

If data is to be used for optimizing the state of government within the United States, then there needs to be a relevant control method. One idea is to only analyze the data between the states.  This would limit the effects from cultural differences seen across the world.  Though, the data cannot be analyzed in a historic way.  In order to limit the effect of time, this data should be analyzed from only one time period.  Looking at different time periods should only be used as a method to confirm that a cause and effect relationship is true through all different parts of our history (i.e. does variable X have the same effect on Y in years 1970, 1980, 1990, etc.).

Following this post will be several statistical studies that look at data between the states within a single time period.  I challenge others to attempt these same methods, rather than traditional ways, for learning about the causes and effects of our governing policies.