"Realistic Possibilities"

Gun Survey #1: Making sense of the Data

The story (probably apocryphal) goes the Voltaire--an atheist all of his life--when on his deathbed pledged his faith in God “just in case.”  I’ve always been fascinated by this “just in case.”

In January, I posted an on-line survey for my students and (later) for the Brookline community, asking them a few questions about their concerns regarding the possibility of a school shooting ever happening in Brookline.

The first question I asked in my survey was, “Are you worried that there might be gun violence in Brookline Public Schools?”  I initially posted this survey shortly after the school shooting in Newtown, and certainly responses to Newtown remained in the media for the entire duration of the survey.  Actual statistics about school shootings make it clear how unlikely such an incident is (see below), but certainly our perceptions of dangers are not strictly based upon statistical probabilities.  Here are the results:

I worry about this a lot		6	5%
I worry about this sometimes		9	8%
I worry about this once in a while		40	33%
I don't worry about this		56	47%
It never occurred to me		9	8%
Other		2	2%

These numbers suggest that the concern about a school shooting occurring in a Brookline Public School is low.  I found it particularly interesting that a significant majority of the “I don’t worry about this” responses came from high school students (mostly seniors) and nearly all of the “I worry about this sometimes” responses came from community members.  Are the students less concerned because they are younger and more naive? do they know more about the way the school functions than the outsiders (adults)?  The sample here is small and without any control, so it’s hardly right to draw too much from the data, but I do find it interesting to consider.  
Statisticians point out that last year (so this doesn’t include Newtown), 50 million (that’s 50,000,000) children went to school.  17 were killed by gun violence while at school.  Far more (sadly) die from accidents.

Toward the end of this (short) survey, I asked, “Do you think that gun violence is a realistic possibility in the Brookline Public Schools?”  In other words, while the first question asked if respondents were worried (an emotion), this later question asked if they thought that a incident was a likely (a question that asks for a more logical calculation).  Of course, I would assume that if a tragedy were a “realistic possibility,” it would be something that we should be “worried” about.  Here are the results:

Do you feel that gun violence is a realistic possibility in the Brookline Public Schools?

Yes		47	39%
No		28	23%
Not sure		36	30%
Other		9	8%

In this case, while the majority of “no’s” are students (again, mostly 12th graders), the “yes’s” are split between parents and students.  So, most students in this survey say that gun violence is a realistic possibility; while a smaller percentage say that it’s not.  This would suggest (and the actual, individual surveys confirm) that a lot of those who are not worried about a violent incident also think that such an incident is a realistic possibility.

Hubris?

A Zen-like belief that there’s no need to worry about what you can’t control?

The rhetorician in me is curious about the connection between what linguists refer to as the "signifier" and the "signified," that is (in this situation), the connection between the words we use to name a feeling such as fear ("realistic possibility" and "are you worried") and what such words actually name. Gun violence is (might be) a "realistic possibility" (respondents say) but we don't worry about it (or worry about it very much. Again, what can this mean?

What do we mean by the term "realistic possibility"?

[to be continued]