MysticCat81's responses precluded by ">>".
One thing I'll mention before I respond to the rest of your points re the various examples of those widely quoted Greek statistics I posted in this thread. I'm aware some/most of them may be urban legends with no basis in fact just so you know and haven't deluded myself they're all true! Hopefully via this thread though we'll be able to establish which if any are true (backed up by verifiable proof).
>> Debunked as Greek Urban Legend by the Center for the Study
>> of the College Fraternity. Their list, which you posted in this
>> thread, shows that R.B. Hayes, who became president in
>> 1877 and was a Deke, was the first "Greek" president,
I quickly found out that this seemed untrue, also. The Center covered themselves, kinda, by saying it "probably" wasn't true of course
. As an aside, when the statistic is generally quoted, it's used in various ways e.g. every president BORN since 1825 is one alternate example, or rather than use the word "greek" they state every president has been a "fraternity man" - which then includes freemasonry (avoiding the Greek argument).
On your next paragraph you explain perfectly why the 'born since' example is equally invalid
.
>> at least if considering an NIC group.
Don't get me started on that again
>> Good luck verifying this.
Thanks
>> This semester? Last semester? Ten years ago? And
>> why "some 730 campuses"? There are lots more
>> college/university campuses than that. Do they mean the
>> campuses that allow Greek life?
If we assume/pretend for one moment this was a valid statistic, then looking at it the way it's phrased it seems to indicate info. is from some type of research, presumably a scholarly study (doctoral thesis etc) which surveyed a finite number of campuses e.g 1000 and 730
~Off topic for one sec: Out of interest how many accredited campuses are there and who are they accredited by? (Just wondered).~
>> Then say so.
Me??
>> There are 123 fraternities and sororities with 9 million
>> members total. See, now here is an example of a statistic that
>> looks straightfoward, but is actually misleading and
>> inaccurate. Just take a look at ariesrising's pages or
>> GreekPages.com, and you can easily find more than 123
>> fraternities and sororities.
>> ...it probably won't get made clear. And yet someone will pick
>> up this "fact" and run with it, placing it in rush info and
>> posting it on the web, and we'll still be seeing it 15 years from
>> now, when even if it once was accurate it won't be any more.
Exactly, I actually agree with most of what you've said, MysticCat81, despite the devils advocate-esque nature of my response. But that's why I think it is important to ewxamine the "statistics" to examine which is true and which is false. If there are positive statistics we can use in rush info and on websites, great but until we reach a point where we know and can prove and explain those stratistics before using the we run the risk of not knowing what we are talking about (when using them).