Quote:
Originally Posted by MsDemeanor
What part of One in five households with television sets watched President Obama’s Oval Office address about the gulf oil spill on Tuesday night, according to the Nielsen Company. An average of 24 million households and 32 million people tuned in to the almost 20-minute address, according to Nielsen, which counts only at-home viewing. is an interpretation that doesn't show or prove anything? Please explain your critical thinking process that led you to this conclusion. |
1 in 5 is a statistic. It is a number. I believe it is also a number based on a random sample of homes that work with Neilsen to track their viewing. Any multitude of people can then come in and interpret that number to mean something. The two people that you linked to offered their own personal interpretations of that number. I don't consider these two interpretations to be particularly meaningful or correct. THey are just two interpretations of Neilsen data written by two people who work for newspapers. They didn't say anything particularly noteworthy. They just offered their opinion of what they thought the Neilsen numbers meant. So therefore, they did not show or prove anything. They just informed me of what they think the Neilsen data means.
10 different people can look at that 1 in 5 and interpret that number to mean 10 different things. Then all we can do is decide who we think offers the best interpretation. 1 in 5 is meaningless until someone inteprets that data. This is where things get sticky.
Rufus