World map showing net reduction in publisher numbers (page 19)

00DAD

Cedars: Sorry 00DAD , I must have missed it in the firefight!!

Thanks. I'm just trying to re-direct the thread back to the main point.

cedars

Thanks. I'm just trying to re-direct the thread back to the main point.

Yes, I'm grateful to you for that.

I'm working on something else at the moment, but perhaps once this thread has sunk a bit I'll release a new thread with the same chart but this time properly titled so as to not confuse or unintentionally mislead any lurkers.

Cedars

slimboyfat

As I commented two pages ago, the Pew Forum published this telling survey result in their Key Findings and Statistics on Religion in America:

Jehovah's Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religious tradition.

There has been a lot of discussion about that report. Isn't it the case that the JW figures are based on something like one or two hundred responses. So the results may be indicative, but unfortunately cannot be considered statistically valid. In the 1990s Rodney Stark commented that Jehovah's Witnesses had very good ratention rates. I do not think the Pew Forum survey offers definitive information on this subject.

00DAD

The Data Tables are available for the Pew survey. You can check 'em out yourself and see what they indicate.

slimboyfat

You are the statistician, you tell me. The sample size for JWs was 215 out of a population of JWs ranging somewhere in the region of over a million active members or two million loosely affiliated adherents in the United States. Is that sample size large enough to produce statistically valid results from that population? I can't find the thread now, but I seem to remember Leolaia concluding it was not.

I have a few books on statistics, I could read up on how to measure validity, and try to work it out.

00DAD

Actually I'm not a statistician. I'm a high school music and science teacher. Prior to this I worked as an accountant.

I do know that there are definite, well-established ways to determine if a sample size is sufficient to yield statistically valid results.

Look here, I am. Then let's compare.

00DAD

slimboyfat

I have tried reading it, but it is well beyond me. It seems a lot more complicated than a simple ratio anyway. The fact that the sample was not weighted to reflect the nationwide distribution of JWs in particular is perhaps relevant to its validity.

wasblind

For the life of me Slim,

How can you trust numbers from an organization that has a history

of one mistake ( lie ) after another

How can you trust an organization that has told folks that they

wouldn't finish high school, and printed a magazine that lied

to a bunch of elderly folk, and when you look at that mag today

every last one is pushin' up daisys

Would you trust their numbers on the survivors alive from 1914 when 2025 comes

Or just take the word of the WTS , that their still alive and kickin' and that's even pushin' our own

mortality

Sheep2slaughter

Just wanted to bump this back up top. Nice thread...i didn't read the whole thing but really like the charts and stats.

Nice work as always Cedars. Thanks.

World map showing net reduction in publisher numbers

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