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Apr
30
Statistics and Other Lies
Filed Under Editorial
I had a conversation with a friend the other day about health and why it’s important. He’s known me for a long time and he was wondering why I was spending so much time and effort on my health. In his mind, it seemed like a pointless waste of time. His argument against a healthy lifestyle came down to two facts:
- First, a healthy lifestyle does not guarantee you a healthy life. You still have a chance to develop diseases like cancer and you can still be the victim of random occurrences like a car accident.
- Second, he pointed to stories in the news and in our circle of friends of people who lived a long and healthy life despite an unhealthy lifestyle.
His first mistake was overestimating the effort required to live a healthy life, but that’s a topic for another post. However, his bigger mistake was a remarkable misunderstanding of statistics.
Statistics
Let’s understand something, being healthy does not GUARANTEE anything. Just because I eat well and exercise does not mean I have a contract with the universe that says “this person lives a healthy lifestyle and therefore they will live a long and healthy life.” The opposite is also true, just because you live an unhealthy lifestyle does not mean you void your body’s warranty and are guaranteed to have a heart attack at a young age. You might in fact be one of the few who smokes two packs a day, eats 2lbs of bacon every morning and still lives to a ripe old age. There are no guarantees in life but there are statistics.
Each time you make a choice in how you live your life, you change the statistical likelihood of certain things happening. For example, if you go to college your are statistically more likely to earn a high wage. Is this guaranteed? Absolutely not. People will always point at success stories like Bill Gates who made billions despite being a college drop out. Unfortunately, he’s the exception and not the rule. If anyone points Bill Gates out as a reason to not go to college, tell them their ignorance of statistics is the reason why they SHOULD go to school. Statistically, you are in fact more likely to make a higher wage if you go to college. The same applies to health.
Health Statistics
Are you guaranteed to get cancer if you smoke? No, not really. Are you guaranteed some kind of cancer immunity if you live a healthy lifestyle? Again, not really. However, statistically, your chances do vary based on your behavior.
Let me use a simple example. Everyone knows what dice are, right? Roll a standard dice and you get a number between 1 and 6. If a person with a healthy life style rolls a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, they avoid getting cancer. For a person who smokes and has many unhealthy habits, those numbers change a bit. They need to roll a 3, 4, 5 or 6 to avoid developing some type of cancer. (By the way, these numbers do not represent actual studies, they’re just picked to illustrate a point).
Is the person with a healthy lifestyle guaranteed a long life? No, there’s always the chance they could roll a 1. What about the person who lives an unhealthy lifestyle, are they guaranteed some disease? No, they could easily roll 3, 4, 5 or 5 for the rest of their life.
However, given a choice between a dice roll where a 1 means you die and a dice roll where a 1 and a 2 means you die? Which one do you pick?
The Statistics of Sexual Performance
Here’s another example for all you guys out there who think health doesn’t matter. Every time you want to have sex, certain things have to occur within your body. Blood needs to flow in order for you to be able to perform. Improper blood flow means impotence.
So each time you want to have sex, you’re rolling a dice. In order to avoid impotence, you need to roll a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6. However, extra layers of fat and a heart that’s completely out of shape are going to negatively impact your ability to perform. So if you’re out of shape, you’re going to make your roll with a die that has the 6 replaced with an extra 1.
Sure, you might make that roll every single time and a healthy person might roll quite a few 1’s. However, given a choice, which die would you like to roll with? The one that has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on it or the one that has 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on it?
Yes, Your Life Can Be Reduced To Simple Numbers
There are no guarantees in life, but there are a lot of statistics. Not all of these statistics can be relied on and a lot of them can be interpreted in different ways. However, what seems certain at this point is that a healthy lifestyle means your statistical chance of health issues ranging from cancer and heart disease to impotence and broken bones is reduced. It’s not a 100% guarantee but it’s certainly worth while.
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Yes, healthy people can die and unhealthy people can live a long life. However, on average, healthy people will have a healthier and longer life than unhealthy ones. That’s why I choose to be healthy and that’s why you should too.
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2 Responses to “Statistics and Other Lies”
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I really enjoyed this article, partly because its been on my mind lately quite a bit too. I wrote a post on how statistics can’t be your prime motivation for eating organic vs. conventionally grown produce. Here’s an excerpt:
“In fact, I think that the only thing that is certain in the debate of the nutritional value of organic vs. conventional is universally true of most things:
93% of the time*, you can prove just about anything with a pile of statistics and an opinion.
(*7% allowed for statistical variance.)
Ok, I admit. I made that statistic up. But it sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?”
I definitely agree with this post. I know many people who have the same opinion as your friend…They think that longlife is a kind of gift and we don’t have to put any effort for it. They should read this article to change their perspective.