Assassinations and selection bias

 

As a kid, I remember receiving for a gift a commemorative coin set--a Kennedy half dollar and some kind of Lincoln coin set in a colorful piece of cardboard above a list of supposed eerie congruences between the assassinations of the two presidents.  I guess it never goes out of style because today I saw a social media post on it, so I can list the congruences, many of which I'd forgotten:

• Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946
• Lincoln was elected President in 1860, Kennedy was elected President in 1960
• Both were particularly concerned with civil rights
• Both wives lost a child while living in the White House
• Both presidents were shot on a Friday
• Both presidents were shot in the head
• Lincoln's Secretary was named Kennedy, Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln
• Both were assassinated by southerners
• Both were succeeded by southerners named Johnson
• Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808; Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908
• John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839; Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939
• Both assassins were known by their three names
• The three names of both assassins have a total of fifteen letters
• Lincoln was shot at the theater named "Ford"; Kennedy was shot in a car called "Lincoln" made by "Ford"
• Booth and Oswald were both killed before their trials
• A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland; a week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe [Don't remember this one being on the list of my commemorative coin set.]
• Kennedy was shot in a theater and the killer ran to a warehouse; Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and the killer ran to a theater

Have a history teacher explain this, if they can, says the header above the list.

I was quite impressed with the list when I was 8 or 10 years old, but I suppose I've grown jaded, because I feel like making fun of it now.  Ford and Johnson are common names, and if you mean to kill someone, shooting them in the head is a common enough strategy.  Both assassins hit what they were aiming for!  And who are these "secretaries" anyway?

The real problem with this list relates to what people with secondary education call selection bias--"the bias introduced by the selection of individuals, groups, or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby assuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population to be analyzed."  So, here's another list:

• Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809; Kennedy on May 29, 1917
• Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, a Saturday; Kennedy on November 22, 1963, a Friday
• Lincoln married Mary Todd; Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier
• Lincoln's assassin was born in Maryland; Kennedy's, in Louisiana
• Kennedy served in the US Senate, representing Massachusetts; Lincoln was from Illinois and never served in the Senate
• Lincoln's vice president, first name Andrew, supported slavery; Kennedy's vice president, first name Lyndon, was a champion of civil rights
• While in office, Lincoln and his wife lost an 11-year-old son named Willie; when Kennedy was in office, he and his wife lost a son, Patrick, who was born prematurely and lived for less than two days
• John Kennedy was known as "Jack"; Abraham Lincoln was often called "Abe"
• Lincoln's assassin was shot in a tobacco shed eleven days after he killed the president; Kennedy's assassin was killed in the basement of Dallas police headquarters two days after he killed the president

It's fun, and, by the way, Marilyn Monroe died, of a drug overdose, on August 5, 1962, more than a year before Kennedy was assassinated.

Comments

[Steve Fiebiger]

One other tidbit. The first name of the camera man for the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination: Abraham.