Some interesting statistics from the American sociologist Elizabeth Wrigley-Field:

Here are three puzzles.

• American fertility fluctuated dramatically in the decades surrounding the Second World War. Parents created the smallest families during the Great Depression, and the largest families during the postwar Baby Boom. Yet children born during the Great Depression came from larger families than those born during the Baby Boom. How can this be?

• About half of the prisoners released in any given year in the United States will end up back in prison within five years. Yet the proportion of prisoners ever released who will ever end up back in prison, over their whole lifetime, is just one third. How can this be?
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• People whose cancers are caught early by random screening often live longer than those whose cancers are detected later, after they are symptomatic. Yet those same random screenings might not save any lives. How can this be?

And here is a twist: these are all the same puzzle.

• Answers here: Length-Biased Sampling by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field

Proxi-Performative Post-Scriptum

The title of this post is, of course, a radical reference to core Led Zeppelin track “Trampled Underfoot” (1975).