Polls, Statistics, and Stories

Polls have shown plummeting numbers for the popularity of President Obama, the economic situation, and the various health care proposals out there. Many have started to sound alarm at this matter. However, numbers may not tell the whole story.

Dan Balz last week had a story that examined behind the poll numbers. What is interesting is that a swell of positive feelings seems to appear when you dig deeper. The polls do not tell the whole story.

I am a quantitative person, but it is important as always to recognize the limits of statistics, polls, models, and other matters, because so much of the richness of human decisions and life lie in stories themselves that we cannot just boil down to simple numbers in easy to analyze questions.