I had a letter published in the Times and in my haste (and to be frank, heightened irritation) I misread a chart about the one of the local schools. I skipped to the last column — where the district totals are displayed — and used those numbers.
How do I know this? The education theorist who wrote the OpEd I was replying to called me at home to complain about how I called him a liar. It would never occur to me to call someone at home in response to something I saw in the paper, unless I knew them: it just sounds creepy.
His claim “When Manhas removed Sacajawea Elementary School from the closure list, with its 61-percent white student population, he intensified the racist character of his proposal” makes a link between the ethnicity of the students and the disposition of the school (see more below). I think that’s a serious accusation to make and my anger at seeing that made me hasty.
I have sent a letter to the Times, taking responsibility for the error: we’ll see what they do.
This is what I also missed in my haste: the argument that removing a majority white school from the proposed closure list was based on its demographics is a logical fallacy.
Correlation implies causation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Correlation implies causation, also known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for “with this, therefore because of this”) and false cause, is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are claimed to be cause and effect.
Ironically, the professor used WikiPedia as a source in his article. Perhaps there’s a logic prof at SeattleU who can clue him in on this concept.