Re: Statistics and culture

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>Another aside on the poverty/statistics thread:
>
>I was talking to a friend who works for an elementary school trade
>publication yesterday. He
>was having trouble with criticisms from a statistical center in the
>Department of Education
>which has several hundred employees whose sole purpose is to generate
>statistics on education.
>My friend said that one reason the U.S. always seems to come out as #1 in
>a lot of studies is
>simply because we have more statistics available than most countries collect.
>
>My question is: does there seems to be a concept in American culture that
>makes us always
>compare ourselves to other countries? Is there something typically
>American about "wanting to
>keep up with the Joneses"? Or does this phenomena also appear in other
>cultures?
>
>Stephanie Wilson

Compared to the Japan, American culture looks positively indifferent to
comparisons with other nations.;-)

John McCreery
3-206 Mitsusawa HT, 25-2 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220, JAPAN

"And the Lord said unto Cyrus, 'Shall the clay say to him who moldest it,
what makest thou? Let the potsherd of the earth speak to the potsherd of
the earth." --An anthropologist's credo

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