Lately I have been sitting at my computer day after endless day crunching numbers. Meanwhile, as I am wont to do, I keep up with politics. It is no surprise this has been an exciting year for politics and the mass confusion surrounding the democratic primary has kept things interesting.

But, throughout this whole process have you noticed who is getting the most respect? Its the numbers guys and it is not even close. Chuck Todd, the numbers guy for MSNBC is probably respected as the best analyst this season and was probably the first mainstream media guy to understand that Sen. Obama won the primary in February as he ran up the numbers on Sen. Clinton. Also, Poblano, who runs the electoral statistics site fivethirtyeight.com (the number of electoral college votes) has gained wide acclaim for his amazing statistical projections, even calling the latest round of primaries in North Carolina and Indiana closer than ANY of the polls using statistical calculations based on demographics and past voting patterns. These two guys, and a few others (CNN's county by county maps have been very helpful), have actually managed to GAIN respect during this primary season as so many other talking heads seem increasingly like opinionated, partisan dimwits that know less about politics than most bloggers.

All of this has lead to my conclusion that there is something about quantitative data that is comforting in confusing times. All of these talking heads are going around speaking with people, listening to speeches, and gathering other qualitative-type evidence which they translate into bombastic opinions hour after hour on the news networks. But, Chuck Todd comes on MSNBC for a 2 min. segment and says more than all the hours of opinion combined. The numbers tell the story here folks, the rest is just fluff.

What is really, really odd about all this is just how simple some of these calculations are and yet we look at these numbers folks as geniuses. Most of what Chuck Todd does is counting, throw in a little addition and subtraction and boom you have a REAL analysis of the state of the race. Check out these ABC Charts and Graphs (ppt) that were put out today that are getting wide acclaim across the Net. Are you kidding me? My high school students could have done that. CNN's awesome county maps are no more than disaggregating the number of votes by county and then calculating a simple percentage. Poblano's statistics are little more involved because he calculates error for weighting purposes, but past that he is using pretty much just percentages disaggregated by state.

My conclusion is then that even simple, easily calculated data can be extremely powerful in confusing times. When everyone knows what's going on and there is general agreement, the numbers are quite meaningless. They just reaffirm the general knowledge, which is nice, but somewhat unnecessary. But, when no one knows what's going on, everyone falls back on the numbers and we put the numbers folks up on a pedestal. As computers become more and more powerful and numbers can be increasingly calculated and posted to the Web automatically in preformed graphical packages (ala Poblano's and CNN's sites). We need to integrate this more into education. Think of a Poblano site for education. Here is the recipe: It takes a certain amount of basic statistical knowledge (which any Doc. Student should have), a basic Web 2.0 knowledge, knowledge of Excel, and a general curiosity. That's it. But with that simple recipe, you can control the conversation in confusing times.

Okay, back to crunching numbers.