{"id":4732,"date":"2010-06-01T22:30:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T22:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2010\/06\/01\/correlation-causation-and-beli\/"},"modified":"2010-06-01T22:30:42","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T22:30:42","slug":"correlation-causation-and-beli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/06\/01\/correlation-causation-and-beli\/","title":{"rendered":"Correlation, Causation, and Belief in Creation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thinking from Kansas, Josh Rosenau notices a correlation<\/a> in data from a Daily Kos poll<\/a> question on the origin of the universe:<\/p>\n

\n

Saints be praised, 62% of the public accepts the Big Bang and a 13.7 billion year old universe. Democrats are the most positive, with 71% accepting that, while only 44% of Republicans agree (38 think it’s more recent, the rest are undecided). I’ve said it before and I stand by it: conservative Republicanism is incompatible with science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But looking at the finer details tells us a lot. The only group – gender, race, or region – with anything like the Republicans’ rejection of basic science, is the South:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Southern split is 48-34, compared to the Republican 44-38.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are some other interesting things to correlate with this figure, such as per-pupil spending on education<\/a> (only two Southern states in the top half), or average school teacher salaries<\/a> (3 in the top 25), or percentage of the population with a Bachelors degree<\/a> (2 in the top 25).<\/p>\n

So, along with creationism, Southern-ness seems to be correlated with substandard education generally, and arguably a lack of respect for education (depending on how you want to spin the spending figures).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Of course, to be fair, Southern-ness is also correlated with poverty– 11 Southern states are in the top 25 in terms of percentage of the population below the poverty line<\/a>. Which could be either cause or effect of the education correlations– a decent case can be made either way.<\/p>\n

(The non-Kos figures are obtained by my sorting the census data and tagging states as “Southern” based more or less on membership in the Confederacy– Virginia on south, and west to Texas. Consider the uncertainty in the count to be +\/-1.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thinking from Kansas, Josh Rosenau notices a correlation in data from a Daily Kos poll question on the origin of the universe: Saints be praised, 62% of the public accepts the Big Bang and a 13.7 billion year old universe. Democrats are the most positive, with 71% accepting that, while only 44% of Republicans agree… Continue reading Correlation, Causation, and Belief in Creation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,13,28,81,30,11,75],"tags":[263,304,305,306,123,87,261,236,88,178],"class_list":["post-4732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class_issues","category-education","category-politics","category-economics_1","category-religion","category-science","category-society","tag-big-bang-theory","tag-class-issues","tag-creationism","tag-economics-2","tag-education-2","tag-politics-2","tag-polls-2","tag-religion-2","tag-science-2","tag-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}