I posted an analysis on my website (mrjoro.org) regarding what I thought might be over-representation of Republicans in the 109th Congress. (The 109th Congress starts in January 2005.) It turned out that I was wrong. You can see all of the details there, but essentially I was trying to see if the 53% of seats that Republicans will hold in the next Congress means that they will represent 53% of the population. My theory that there were a bunch of smaller Republican states with a single Representative where the population was less than the population of the "average" Congressional district. I went through the numbers, figuring out how many people each party actually represented. To my initial surprise, the percentage of population represented by Republicans roughly matches the percentage of seats they hold in the House. (Of course, this is how the House is supposed to operate, unlike the Senate which is purposely designed to give states with less population more power.) Looking back, it should have been immediately obvious this was going to happen; you can read the analysis to find out why. In essence, my assumptions were just wrong, and there were things that someone a bit quicker than me would have realized right away. But the important thing I learned about myself in doing this exercise is that satisfying a curiosity is, well, satisfying even if I don't get the results I expect (or want). It reminds me of Junior High science classes, where the teachers tried to emphasize that you were supposed to come up with a hypothesis before doing your experiments, and it didn't even matter if you were wrong. That was a surprisingly difficult lesson for me to grasp (I hated being wrong.) Fortunately, I've grown a bit since Junior High. I don't mind so much learning that I am wrong, especially when it helps remove distraction. Really, suppose I had been right about the Republican's being over-represented. I would have some smug satisfaction that Republicans really only represented, say, 51% of the population, not the 53% that it seemed like. But what would that gain me? It would simply be a distraction. It is much better to focus on the substance of how the Democrats are going to retake the House and Senate in 2006. Beyond realizing I was wrong, I had to decide whether or not to share the information with everyone else. It would have been easy for me to say "Well, no one has to know how bad my assumptions were," delete the spreadsheet, and forget about it. But why not put it out there just in case someone else is thinking the same thing I was. Plus, the spreadsheet could be useful for some other analysis. (I had to create the list of how many Representatives from each party made up the Congressional delegation for each state by counting them myself--I couldn't find the data anywhere on the web. Now it's out there, and maybe someone else will stumble upon it.) Finally (and this goes to the heart of what may have been visible in a few earlier entries), I have learned over the years that I am not right all of the time. I like having my assumptions challenged. When I was making the assumption that the "moral values" voters were being hypocritical, I was chastened (but gladly so) when it turned out that many of the people also did consider poverty and the environment to be moral issues as well. This is not to say that I do not have core beliefs. There are things I believe fundamentally, and I don't expect people will be able to show me that I am wrong. For example, I believe strongly in the civil rights for gays, including all of the benefits of marriage that the government offers. I will not be convinced otherwise. (Whether the government should be in the business of offering these benefits is a separate question.) It is for these reasons that I do not just read liberal news sources or websites. As I describe in my earlier entry on magazines, I'm currently subscribing to several magazines that have a more libertarian or conservative perspective. As long as the source is principled and well-articulated, I am open to a little assumption-challenging. (If the source is shrill and antagonistic--such as, say, Fox News--then I will tune it out.)