Signs of the times? Not likely.

Following the tornado in Joplin, MO, I found myself in a discussion about whether this was another sign of the times. The argument presented to me was that these natural disasters are becoming more frequent. I countered that I did not believe this was the case, and before I knew it, evidence was being presented to demonstrate to me that these events were, indeed, more frequent now than in the past.

The evidence as it was presented was that since the 2007 adoption of the Enhanced Fujita scale--a scale the measures the strength of a tornado--there have been 5 EF5 tornadoes, four of which have occurred in 2011. Upon my stating that it was not possible to determine if that was any meaningful change without EF tornado data from before 2007, I was informed that there had been about 50 EF5 tornadoes since 1950.

The basic assumptions that immediately came to mind were that annual tornado frequencies follow a Poisson distribution. So 50 tornadoes over 57 years (1950 - 2006) suggests an annual tornado rate of 0.877. The annual tornado rate from 2007 - 2011 would be 5 tornadoes in 5 years, or 1.000. I didn't run a formal comparison, but my suspicion is that the difference in those rates wouldn't be noted as significant by a statistical test. And I said as much.

And then followed the counter argument: "You seem to have missed the fact that there were four tornadoes in 2011 alone."

Well, if you're going to give me silly arguments, you're going to get walloped with the evidence. So here we go.

I went to Wikipedia and pulled off the data for all of the EF5 tornadoes since 1950. I loaded them into a spreadsheet, and then imported the data into R 2.12.2 to do some analysis. First, let's take a look at the annual frequency of EF5 tornadoes.



As you can see, many of the years saw no tornadoes at all. Many saw only 1, and in 12 years, there were more than one EF5 tornadoes observed. I'll also point out that in four of the multiple EF5 tornado years, two or more tornadoes appeared in the same storm system. For instance, in 1974 we saw six EF5 tornadoes all on the same day. In 2011, three EF5 tornadoes were noted on one day in April.

Perhaps the most interesting observation, and this is strictly visual, is that there appears to be a more dense appearance of tornadoes on the left side of the graph than on the right. In other words, there were more EF5 tornadoes in the beginning of the study period than in the end.

Looking at the data in a slightly different way, we see how frequently multiple tornadoes are observed in a year. In the figure below, it's pretty clear that multiple EF5 tornadoes are pretty rare. Based on the data for 62 years, and having seen 2 years with 4 tornadoes, we can expect to see 4 EF5 tornadoes occur 3.2 times every 100 year. In other words, about once in every 33 years. That last time we saw 4 tornadoes in a single year was 43 years ago. Seems like we were due for a big year.


Now, just to solidify this even more, let's run a poisson regression model to see if there has been a change in the frequency of EF5 tornadoes between 1950 and 2011. Running the model (using the glm function in R), we find that there has been a 1.1% reduction in the frequency of tornadoes over time. However, this reduction is not statistically significant (p = 0.129). Based on the data, then, all we can say is that there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that the number of EF5 tornadoes has increased since 1950.

What does this have to do with signs of the times? Well, all I'm trying to say is that if you think that these natural disasters are God's way of telling us that the end is rapidly approaching, then you might want to rethink how that fits the data. If four EF5 tornadoes in 2011 is a warning from God, he must have been trying to send an even stronger warning in 1974. The sophist in me wants to ask if the end of the world was closer at hand in 1974 than it is now.

Ultimately, the point is that the Second Coming of Christ cannot be boiled down to a single event. It's a process that has been underway for a long time now. I think there's very little point in trying to interpret the "signs of the times," especially when we have so little data to be able to understand if anything we're experiencing is any different than what past centuries have experienced. It's a lot more productive to be mindful of what you as an individual can do to be worthy to meet your God, regardless of when that time comes.



Some limitations on my analysis. First, it's limited to EF5 tornadoes. In understanding the overall trend of destruction by tornado, we'd need to include all tornadoes. From what I've presented, we really can't determine if there has been an uptick in, say, EF4 tornadoes. Professionally, I'd be surprised if there was.

Second, the data don't actually follow a Poisson distribution, making the model I built somewhat biased. The figure below illustrates how the data are distributed...more of a zero-inflated Poisson distribution (such distributions have more 0 counts than we would expect and more counts in the right tail than we would expect if adhering to a Poisson distribution). Indeed, the data are much too overdispersed to be modeled particularly well by poisson regression, and zero-inflated adjustments would be most appropriate. At the same time, such methods aren't likely to change the conclusions.

More like us than we're comfortable to admit

In all of this post-bin Laden coverage I've been reading countless articles investigating countless viewpoints of the events. Like most people, I imagine I'm looking for something that justifies--or at least explains--how I feel. And I think I found it.

I came across this excerpt of Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World written by Bin Laden's first wife and one of their sons. There were a few segments in this brief excerpt that stood out to me.

Since the time I could observe and reason, I have mainly known my father to be composed, no matter what might be happening. That’s because he believes that everything of earthly life is in the hands of God. It is difficult, therefore, for me to imagine that he became so excited when my mother told him I was about to be born that he momentarily misplaced his keys.

After a frantic search, I’m told he settled my mother hastily in the car before spinning off at a reckless speed. Luckily he had recently purchased a new automobile, the latest Mercedes, because on that day he tested all its working parts. I’ve been told it was golden in color, something so beautiful that I imagine the vehicle as a golden carriage tearing through the wide palm-tree-lined boulevards of Jeddah, Saudia Arabia.

Never did I hear my father raise his voice in anger to my mother. He always seemed very satisfied with her. In fact, when I was very small, there were times that he and my mother secluded themselves in their bedroom, not to be seen by the family for several days, so I know that my father enjoyed my mother’s company.

This one stood out to me because of how I've reacted to such reports from church leaders about their own spouses. It's difficult for me to imagine a man never raising his voice. Now take a man that we've painted to be the very embodiment of evil, rivaled perhaps only by Adolf Hitler (level of evil may itself be only a matter of legend) and imagine him never raising his voice in anger to his wife.

You might have guessed by now that my father was not an affectionate man. He never cuddled with me or my brothers. I tried to force him to show affection, and was told that I made a pest of myself. When he was home, I remained near, pulling attention-gaining pranks as frequently as I dared. Nothing sparked his fatherly warmth. In fact, my annoying behavior encouraged him to start carrying his signature cane. As time passed, he began caning me and my brothers for the slightest infraction.

Thankfully, my father had a different attitude when it came to the females in our family. I never heard him shout at his mother, his sisters, my mother, or my sisters. I never saw him strike a woman. He reserved all the harsh treatment for his sons.

My father relented when it came to football—or soccer, as Americas call it. When he brought a ball home, I remember the shock of seeing him smile sweetly when he saw how excited his sons became at the sight of it. He confessed that he had a fondness for playing soccer and would participate in the sport when he had time.

So he wasn't gentle with everyone, and was notably harsh on his sons. Somehow, at least to me, these last two passages are especially poignant indicators that he had all of the complexities of humanity that we are familiar with. Harsh and demanding of his sons, gentle with the women in his life. Yet unable to resist the joy of seeing his sons excited to play soccer. Even for Osama, some things are just too good to pass up.

I wrote the other day (or was it yesterday) that I couldn't help but feel that he was more human than we let on. I think I found my confirmation. He was human, and he was complex, and he was more like us than I imagine most people are willing to admit. It's a lot easier to stomach and celebrate the death of a person when we convince ourselves of his uni-dimensional wickedness.

I contemplated these things as I walked to scouts last night, wondering how a man can become what he became. How did he go from the well respected and liked human calculator to the man with a $25 million bounty? What I ultimately settled on (admittedly, without any evidence) is that he chose to blame all the world's problems on one thing and obsessed over it. He entered a rabbit hole and kept sliding down, never taking off the blinders to see the nuance and complexity of human existence. The solution to every problem was adherence to his particular brand and interpretation of religion. Once far enough into the rabbit hole, it's hard to get out.

Then it really hit me--I'm not that much different. I haven't written much on this blog, but if you've ever talked to me about religion and the church, you're probably familiar with my accusations that the church culture is a barrier to progress in the church and for its members. Anytime I find something I don't like about how the church or my congregation functions, I blame it on the church culture. In my opinion, it was church culture that would destroy the church if its ridiculous traditions weren't broken.

Talk about a wake up call. I was reminded of something as I walked: there's only one thing that can destroy the church. And that one thing is the failure of its members to recognize and accept the healing power of the Atonement of Christ in their lives.

Time for me to come up out of my rabbit hole.

I'm not celebrating

Call me crazy, but I actually have really mixed feelings about the killing of Bin Laden. And I'm not comfortable celebrating the violent death of another human.

My wife told me the news last night while I was laying down with my sick daughter, trying to cool down the room and keep her head elevated so that she could breathe well enough to stop coughing and get a good night's sleep. Now, I can't help but wonder if we'd be this happy about his death if the media had ever played clips showing him playing with his grandchildren, or propping his own child to a position in which he could sleep.

Say what you will about whether or not he ever would have done such a thing, but the point still stands: the man was a human being and, by my beliefs, a fellow son of God. His death is a tragedy.

Even more tragic, however, is the fact that the necessity of his death existed (yes, I am admitting that it needed to be done). So for me, the victory is bittersweet--a tragic end to a tragedy of human existence.

On a happier note, many heartfelt thanks to those men and women who take on these challenges. Their work is precisely why I can let my sick daughter become my only care in the world--even when such big and important news is taking place. For that, I cannot thank them enough.