Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

11 Statistics and the Inference to the Best Explanation: Living Without Complexity? 175
that in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium compared to the French-speaking part
more drugs are used to treat ADHD and less for depression). Yet at the same time
they may conceal what we should (also) be concerned with. But to simply regard
statistics as dangerous (or redundant) does not do justice to the complexity of what
is involved in understanding.
The philosophical problems about the structure of language, namely the particular
metaphysical enframing (and longing) that unavoidably seems to take place (this
is overwhelmingly clear in Plato’s work and those positions that were developed in
this vein) and which was foreshadowed in pre-Socratic stances (such as the fascination
for numbers) and present in later developments for instance by Bacon and
Descartes, haunts us – to use a Wittgensteinian expression. As a result, the ideals of
objectivity (bracketing the performative embeddedness) and rationality that, since
the Enlightenment, have characterized our understanding of reality may be seen as
indicative of an unwillingness to live with complexity. Humans not only long for
knowledge (to know how things are, for instance ‘Is this a tenor characterizing a
particular voice?’ or ‘How long will I be in the traffic jam – incidentally, knowledge
of that does not shorten the time?’), they also seem to have an insatiable need to
gain control over the world. That we always use concepts that invoke something
general, that there is no alternative to this even when we take it fully into account,
is a profound Wittgensteinian insight. When looking at crime stories we saw that
statistics can take us down the right road. Their attraction lies in the fact that they
make things simpler and answer a ‘human all too human need’ to get some kind
of grip on reality. This is bound up with the force of rhetoric, a force that may be
easier to exploit now than ever before given the availability of super computers and
web-based dissemination of what has been found to be the case.
Notes
1. Incidentally, it is interesting to notice that examples from the atomic and subatomic world
show us that there is a limit to the joint precision with which two so-called complementary
parameters can be known: there is an inescapable uncertainty if one attempts to ascertain the
values of both the position and momentum of a particle. The same thing goes for energy and
time. Ascertaining the position of an electron with great precision makes us unable to ascertain
its momentum exactly, and vice-versa. More precisely, when a photon strikes an electron, the
direction in which the electron will go is not determined. There is a probability distribution over
all possible directions. Furthermore, in this collision the amount by which the frequency of the
photon will change is not determined. A probability distribution over all possible amounts
exists. Because of the conservation of energy and of momentum, there is a perfect correlation
between the direction of the electron and the change in frequency of the photon. The pair
of values is however not determined. Incidentally, it is important in this context to refer to
problems with our instruments of measurement. The click that results from a genuine photon
detection is utterly indistinguishable from the click that results from a spurious count. And
finally, there is of course the presumption that conditions surrounding this particular occurrence
can be specified in enough detail to establish the existence of a unique necessary and sufficient
cause (this example is discussed in Salmon, 1998). To offer an explanation here is something
different: it comes down to the assembling of a total set of relevant conditions against which the
event can be explained, and to the citing of the probability of that event in the presence of these