RESEARCH QUESTION--
What Are the Most Unquestionable Statistics?
Boosting the public's appreciation of numbers
The world is awash in statistics. Some are gathered with great care and skill. Others are of doubtful accuracy, meaning, and/or use. We want to find the most unquestionable statistics in existence. Or to put it another way: which statistics are so very outstanding that you shouldn't even bother to question their worth.
We invite you to take part in this project.
An Example (and possible winner): The Rapture Index
Our current leading example is the Rapture Index maintained by Todd Strandberg. (Thanks to investigator Pia Mukherji for bringing this to our attention.) This is how Strandberg describes his statistics:
I think we can all agree: Nobody should bother to question the worth of the Rapture Index.The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.
You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.
Call for Data
If you know of a set of statistics even more outstanding than this one, please send us details of (a) what it is and (b) where to find it.
© Copyright 2000 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
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