Knee Deep in the Hooah!

Hat tip to Black Five for leading me to the following article by Alan Fraser of American Thinker. When I first came across the AP article he mentions I knew that the statistics being used in the story were not telling the whole story. In research unless you have a total and accurate picture of the subject then you really can not draw any conclusions from the statistics. Remember the quote attributed to Mark Twain (and many others too)? There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies; and statistics. The story I read that AP put out was obviously a damned statistical lie.

When ever you are reading a story that backs it’s claims with numbers it is important to see the numbers from different angles. Rates, ratios, percentages, total numbers and definitions are all absolutely needed to even begin to understand exactly what is going on with the numbers. It is also very important to try and think through any possible alternative explanations for the changes in the numbers that you may see. Sometimes an explanation may seem to have face validity (such as desertion rates jumping sharply during a time of war), but when you begin to look at the rates and ratios from previous years then the numbers really may tell a different story all together. Please take a moment and read the excerpt below, and visit the American Thinker blog and read the article in its entirety. Remember that predigested information is a lot like highly processed food — it should only be accepted from someone you trust, and it loses a lot of nutrients and flavor in the process.

Military Desertion Rates and the Associated Press
By Alan Fraser
November 18, 2007

Excerpt

According to America’s biggest news agency, the United States is facing what amounts to a desertion crisis in its military. Lolita C. Baldur of the Associated Press writes a story headlined, “Army Desertion Rate Up 80 Pct. Since ‘03.

According to this AP story, 9 in every 1,000 soldiers “went AWOL” in fiscal ending September 30, 2007. In the year ended September 30, 2006, nearly 7 per 1,000 were AWOL. The article uses the terms AWOL and desertion interchangeably even though they are not the same. A deserter is a member of the armed forces who remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away permanently or goes away from his unit with the intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service. e.g. during times of war. Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The article continues on to show how reported desertion rates from the past were not used in AP’s reporting:

This is all interesting. But are these rates that AP hypes in its article high or low relative to other periods in history. Relative to other wars, for instance. What do you think?

According to author Rod Powers (who spent 23 years in the Air Force), the desertion rates per 1,000 for the Army and Marines from 1997 through 2004 are as follows:

ARMY

1997		2,218		4.58 per 1,000
1998		2,520		5.20 per 1,000
1999		2,966		6.13 per 1,000
2000		3,949		8.16 per 1,000
2001		4,597		9.50 per 1,000
2002		4,483		9.26 per 1,000
2003		3,678		7.60 per 1,000
2004		2,376		4.91 per 1,000

Read entire article HERE

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