Promote happiness and hope to others

The better the research methods that produced the data to which statistical tests are applied, the more reliable the results - and vice versa. The most reliable insights derive from robust research methods generating strong data as inputs, with robust statistical analysis applied to generate outputs in the form of conclusions. This immediately suggests a crucial limitation of statistical analysis: garbage in, garbage out . Statistical methods can only crunch the numbers they are fed; I was even able to give my ex a genuine, wide smile and a cheerful, `Thanks, see you later,' when he dropped off the kids. His confused expression said it all. I was no longer cranky and sleepwalking through my life. I had more energy and goodwill to spare. Be the heroine of your life, not the victim. Do you see your divorce as the worst thing that's ever happened to you? Or did it teach you lessons you needed to learn to cultivate more meaningful relationships in the future? Was it a disappointment so great you will never get over it? Or did it crack you open and help you grow into a better person? How we recount the story of our divorce matters because the stories we tell ourselves have power. My greatest impact is through my children. The more children I have, the more ability I have to impact the world for God (Hagerty, 2009). Citing Psalm 127:5, which claims that men whose quivers are full of children are blessed, Quiverfull Christians advocate unrestricted reproduction (after marriage) to populate the country with other evangelicals and thus combat what they perceive as an increasingly secular United States that is hostile to religious and moral values. By interpreting attitudes toward birth control as a war on religion and using militaristic language, anticontraception activists and thinkers employ some of the same strategies of those who advocate for birth control. Feminist activists and women's health organizations argue that attacks on birth control amount to a war on women. This war, they claim, has a long history in the United States.

According to historian Rickie Solinger (2013), debates about who should have the power to manage women's reproductive capacities have often been linked to debates involving larger issues--social, cultural, and economic, across the spectrum (p. Within this context, Solinger reminds us, women have often been excluded from . In the twentieth century and today, feminist activists have argued that women's health, safety, dignity, and access to full citizenship depend[s] on their ability to control their own bodies and fertility (p. Opponents of the war on women link bodily autonomy with rights and citizenship, demanding policies and laws that protect practices such as contraception and abortion. Imagine if, in a given group of 5 people, 3 wore blue and 2 wore red. Would the difference be statistically significant? How were they recruited? The basis for a formal conclusion in a construct such as this is a statistical test called the Chi Square. If you happen to want to know more about it, I have just the article for you. The beauty of statistics (yes, I think there really is such a thing! Does your intuition tell you that the difference between 3 blue and 2 red shirts is not significant? I believe it does, and here's why. If just one more person comes along and he happens to be wearing a red shirt, the difference is eliminated entirely. Intuition tells us the apparent difference is trivial, because a truly trivial change in conditions would eliminate it. They influence our actions and our self-image. To see two very different tales that women told themselves after they were abandoned and in pain, we offer up stories that will be familiar to many: Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston, who made headlines for years after her husband left her for his costar, and Miss Havisham, the unforgettable jilted bride from Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations. For years during and after her divorce, Jennifer Aniston was cast by the media as the spurned woman who couldn't make a romantic relationship work. She spoke openly about the challenges of having her divorce play out in front of the world and struggled to rise above the fray. Rather than criticize her ex publicly, she spoke of wanting to grow and said she was grateful for the chance to rediscover herself. She was also determined to make a different choice from her mother, who had been angry and bitter after her own divorce.

In time, the actress moved gracefully past the press's unflattering portrayal. She gave her divorce story a happy ending by learning about herself, seemingly keeping a positive attitude, and making peace with the experience. Miss Havisham, the jilted heroine in Great Expectations, tells herself a very different story. Heartbroken and humiliated after she is left at the altar and defrauded of her fortune, she never again ventures outside her home. During the 2012 U. After Barack Obama won the White House for a second term in 2012, polls and studies affirmed that women voters, possibly responding to a perceived attack on contraception and larger war on women, were largely responsible for this victory (Deckman & McTague, 2015). As we discussed in article 2 of this article, popular attitudes toward birth control in the United States are also informed by history and culture. The history of coercion, cruelty, and brutality perpetuated on women of color and immigrants has continued in the form of persistent suspicion related to these women's use of birth control (Silliman, Fried, Ross, & Gutierrez, 2016, p. It is important to concede that the reasons for some people's wariness about birth control are complex and deeply rooted in our nation's history and that, in many cases, this wariness stems from racism and/or misogyny. Despite current controversies and debates, almost all Americans continue to support birth control. In 2012, 90% of Americans, and 82% of U. Catholics, agreed that birth control is moral (Newport, 2012). According to the Guttmacher Institute (2018), 99% of Catholics and Protestants who have had sexual intercourse have ever used some form of contraception. In fact, among those at risk of unintended pregnancy, approximately 73% of Protestants and 74% of evangelicals use a highly effective method, such as hormonal contraception, sterilization, or an IUD. Statistics, which is all about probabilities, uses formal calculations to reach exactly the same conclusion. What if, instead, our sample was not 5, but 500; Is this significant ? The formal statistical answer is: yes. But so is the intuitive answer, for the obvious converse of the reason above. To even out the distribution of shirts now, we would need every one of the next 100 recruits to be wearing red.

If the next 100 recruits are from the same general pool of candidates as the first 500, intuition tells us that is very unlikely. Even if the next 100 recruits are split down the middle - 50 blue, 50 red - we wind up with 350 blue, 250 red - and that's still a sizable difference. Without dealing in formal calculations or getting into the weeds, our reflexive intuition - as described by Malcolm Gladwell in `Blink' as thinking without thinking - took us promptly to the correct conclusion, and for just the right reason. When the apparent difference between two groups is unlikely to be eliminated by any set of likely adjustments, it tends to represent a significant difference between groups. She leaves the wedding breakfast and wedding cake rotting on the table. Even the clocks in the mansion are stopped at the exact time she received the letter from her fiance calling things off. She stays stuck in a bitter place, never again making herself vulnerable to another relationship, or even taking off her wedding dress. That one disappointing man who left her shapes the rest of her life . You're the author of your tale. You decide how you want to view your divorce--and whether you might want to reframe the story you've been telling yourself and others. Many women in the Maplewood Divorce Club stopped telling woe-is-me divorce stories in which they were the victims. Instead, they recast their tales using what we call the Reframe/Reclaim Technique so that they emphasized their personal growth and accentuated the positive. We found inspiration in public figures who have discovered opportunity within their divorces and in doing so, reframed their stories of personal challenges into success stories. One of our favorite performers, Tina Turner, could have let her story of abuse at the hands of a man she loved define her life. Although the vast majority of Americans favor unrestricted access to birth control, the issue remains an area of intense debate and disagreement. What has been described as an American culture war--those opposing the war on religion against those decrying a war on women--affects public policy at both the federal and state level. What laws and regulations make it easier for women to access birth control? Although many individuals and organizations consider birth control to be a global issue that transcends geographic borders, individual governments have their own laws, regulations, and policies. Policy has a significant effect on access to contraception, and birth control access and affordability can transform alongside political and governmental changes, even in developed countries such as the United States. According to Wyer, Barbercheck, Cookmeyer, Ozturk, and Wayne (2014), the increasing visibility of women's health care in public policy discussions over the past few decades is a sign of progress in women's health in the United States (p.

Indeed, with mostly bipartisan support in the past 60 years, birth control has become safer, cheaper, and more accessible overall (Office of Women's Health, 2014). Across the United States, numerous birth control laws and regulations at both the federal and state level have developed over decades. In 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to discuss contraception, declaring, I cannot imagine anything more emphatically a subject that is not a proper political or governmental activity or function or responsibility. However, by the 1960s and 1970s, federal U. The meaning of significant here is dual; The two align by design. The very point of all formal tests of statistical significance is to indicate whether what we see is more likely to be meaningful and reliable, or a fluke. It's all about probability, and our intuitive sense of that, while not perfect, is pretty good! How does this pertain to what we do (and don't) know about nutrition - and how does it figure among the relevant statistical lies? A very small sample size can readily obscure a true, meaningful difference. So beware small studies used to tell you what ISN'T true! A very large sample can readily amplify a difference of trivial real-world importance into statistical significance; That final point requires a proviso. At the level of whole populations of millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of people, even very small effects can add up to make enormously important differences. Instead, she found a way to move past it. When she left her husband, she was not only emotionally and physically bruised but also financially destitute. One of our greatest singers, who by then had several No. Tina Turner's story of abuse became just one article in the life of a survivor. Lawyer and politician Wendy Davis was just twenty-one, with a young daughter, when she went through her divorce. To make ends meet, she worked at a doctor's office and as a waitress while she attended community college.