gladwell.com: The PitBull Paradox

March 17, 2006 By 2 Comments

Mal­colm Glad­well has a great post on his blog about the dan­ger of sta­tis­tics. He has an uncanny abil­ity to look at a sit­u­a­tion or prob­lem from a unique angle, and he demon­strates it again in “The Pit Bull Para­dox.” Are Pit Bulls more dan­ger­ous? I have a friend who has one that is a great dog. She hap­pens to be a great dog owner, which may actu­ally make a big­ger dif­fer­ence than dog type. It seems that Pit Bulls are great stu­dents, and if taught to be vicious, will do so con­sis­tently and com­pletely. There is no in between for this breed. Once taught how to behave the dog will not likely hide nor change its tem­per­ment. It is an inter­est­ing way of look­ing at a dog which has been widely demo­nized across Amer­ica. They are ille­gal to own in Day­ton,very dif­fi­cult to own in Day­ton, and if a Pit Bull attacks some­one it is almost always the lead story on the local news. I per­son­ally don’t know how com­fort­able I would be with my one of my neigh­bors own­ing one, but this post by Glad­well cer­tainly makes me think about it more deeply. Every time I read his work I find myself say­ing “of course, that was so obvi­ous, how could I have missed that angle.” Whether you agree or dis­agree with his con­clu­sions, there is lit­tle doubt that he is bril­liant and his work is com­pelling.
gladwell.com: The Pit­Bull Paradox

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Comments

  1. David Esrati says:
    March 18, 2006 at 6:47 am

    It’s not ille­gal to own a pit bull in Day­ton– you just have to carry a half mil­lion dol­lar bond– which is sup­posed to stop idiots from own­ing them.
    How­ever– if one is taken in by the dog war­den– it’s almost impos­si­ble to get it back.

    but– the point of his post was noth­ing to do with pit-bulls.
    It’s sta­tis­tics– and how sam­ple size can skew results– if the sam­ple pool changes as it gets bigger.

    So many sta­tis­tics we accept as “fact” are tainted by the way the ques­tion is asked. We often inter­pret sta­tis­tics to prove what we thought– as opposed to really under­stand what is going on.

  2. david says:
    March 20, 2006 at 8:54 am

    David,

    It is about sta­tis­tics. What makes Glad­well so inter­est­ing to me is not just his abil­ity to debunk sta­tis­tics, but more so his abil­ity to chal­lenge uni­ver­sal assump­tions. The Pit Bull is impor­tant to his nar­ra­tive, as the name of the breed alone tells a story in our minds. The Pit Bull is seen as a fero­cious beast, one that evokes fear, not just by sta­tis­tics, but by the images that are fed to us through “live, local, and late break­ing cov­er­age.” Glad­well looks at it from a slightly dif­fer­ent angle, and has the gift of pre­sent­ing his thoughts so that we can do the same. Debunk­ing the sta­tis­tics is just the sur­face.
    Also, thanks for the cor­rec­tion on the Day­ton law.
    Thanks for voic­ing your opin­ion, and for that great Pizza Fac­tory Pizza. Once I get a job, Pizza is on me!

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