Subject: categories: Tom Fox in the news

From: Peter Freyd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 09:45:08 -0500 (EST)

Copyright 2004 National Post, All Rights Reserved
                             National Post (Canada)

                    February 2, 2004 Monday National Edition

SECTION: Editorials; Pg. A11

LENGTH: 216 words

HEADLINE: 'Lying' statistics

SOURCE: National Post

BYLINE: Thomas Fox

BODY:
Re: How Efficient Are Our Governments? Not Very. William Watson, Jan. 29

Mr. Watson should take a refresher course in mathematics before quoting
statistics to prove the thesis in his title. He uses "performance per unit of
public spending" to measure government efficiency when it measures nothing of
the kind.

Consider the following model: Suppose in country A, people spend $100 each on
health care, paid directly to service providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.). In
country B, people pay $100 in taxes to the government, which then pays for all
health care. If the health care delivered is the same, Mr. Watson would say the
government of country B was horribly inefficient because it spends a portion of
the GDP on health care while government A spends 0% of GDP on health care. And
if the people of country B get better service, Mr. Watson still says government
B is inefficient -- "there isn't much bang for the big-government buck." How can
better service for the same cost to the public be a sign of inefficiency?

There are, of course, reasonable and accurate ways to measure government
efficiency, but this isn't it. As Disraeli said "There are three kinds of lies:
lies, damned lies and statistics."

Dr. Thomas Fox
professor of mathematics
Dawson College, Montreal.