Hunting and Gathering with Newt

Newt Gingrich asserts, with no explicit evidence, that, “There’s a certain amount of hunting for ‘what is it that Trump has done that’s dumb?’”

I decided somebody needed to fact check this claim, and that somebody should be me. Because it would be really funny, and if I did it quick it wouldn’t be already all over the internet yet. (Probably too late.)

Let’s take this apart. First, the claim that people are ‘hunting.’ I think this is technically correct. If placing a shotgun into a barrel full of fish and pulling the trigger can be considered ‘hunting’, then, yes: People are hunting for, “what is it that Trump has done that’s dumb?”

The quantitative part is more interesting (Shooting fish in a barrel is not supposed to be interesting. If you find yourself developing an interest in shooting fish in a barrel, you should probably look for another hobby. Take up blogging.)  I have just taught a class on how to think with data and statistics, using Huff’s classic text, “How to Lie with Statistics”. The goal is to help students become educated consumers of statistical claims. Let’s see what we have learned.

Gingrich writes that “there is a certain amount” of hunting going on. Now, “a certain amount” is a classic statistical dodge, so well known, that Huff doesn’t even deal with it in the book. A certain amount is an amount that is certain. Zero is a certain amount. It is a really good certain amount, because it is often easy to tell if you have zero of something. Almost anything can be a certain amount. I guess not irrational numbers. I doubt Gingrich and Trump deal much in irrational numbers, though (irrational numbers are not to be confused with numbers used in the absence of rationality). Amounts greater than zero can be tricky. Even small amounts have some degree of uncertainty about them. A single table can have a little chip out of a leg or something, and, if there are enough chips missing you have a sorites, and an uncertain amount of table. In fact, it’s generally easier to be certain about your amount the smaller that amount is. If we think of absolute error rather than percentage that’s clear (I prove this in a technical appendix. Yes, my blog has technical appendices). So, I take Gingrich’s claim to be that there is an amount of hunting going on that is between 0 and positive infinity (I’ve read on a bumper sticker that “A bad day hunting beats a good day working.” so I believe hunting cannot be negative)    . It is likely on the smaller end of that range, close to zero, because we are “certain” about the amount.

There is another way to approach this estimation problem, and that is to use optimal foraging theory. What we have is an unlimited supply of a resource (“what is it that has Trump done that’s dumb”) that can be obtained with an almost infinitesimal expenditure of effort. This is a very complicated problem in optimal foraging theory (I go through all this in the technical appendix). It’s complicated because the numbers get really big really quickly because you are dividing a giant number by a teeny tiny one (that’s in the appendix). I also prove that shooting fish in a barrel is an evolutionarily stable strategy (that means that as long as nobody steals your barrel, it’s almost always a good idea to look for fish there, sort of).

Now we have a solution to the inductive puzzle Gingrich poses. We can conclude that there likely are lots and lots of people standing around the barrel waiting for “what is it that Trump has done that’s dumb” to come flopping out at their feet (because the barrel is now so full it’s hard to poke a gun in there).

There are other things in Gingrich’s statement to analyze, like just “what is it that Trump has done that’s dumb?” but those are pretty self explanatory.

So I rate Gingrich’s claim, “Confirmed!”

(Fun fact: I was spelling his name “Gingerich” and it was getting the red underline in Word. It’s a name, what can you expect. But then I checked and found the right spelling. Turns out, Word’s spell checker knows “Gingrich”.  I wonder what you have to do to get in spell checker. I bet its harder than getting into Wikipedia. A lot harder.)

(Not as fun fact: As I was updating the technical appendix, I accidentally read what Trump really said about Andrew Jackson, that led Gingrich to defend him.  I thought Trump's point was quite reasonable. He said that had Jackson been around later, he could have avoided the problems that led to the Civil War. Whether or not you agree, it's not a dumb thing to say, and reveals a knowledge of history, not ignorance. I stand with Trump and Gingrich on this one.)