I was listening to a friend talk to me about the school systems in the state of California which, he insisted, were getting worse. He pointed at this at one example of how life has gotten worse for the middle class over the past fifty years.

I responded to this by asking him, "Do you think it's possible to look at the last fifty years and conclude that life has gotten better for the middle class instead of worse?"

He shrugged and offered a rather lucid, insightful response: "Well, it depends how you measure it."

Recently, I read a book that claimed a study found that teenagers who listen to music that contains predominantly minor chords are more intelligent than those who listen to "happier" music with major chords. I have no doubt in my mind that this study offered accurate results that support that conclusion. But how did they gauge the intelligence of each teen? And how many minor chords are we talking about?

Data isn't the end-all, be-all of reaching a final conclusion, but in dealing with assumptions based on broad, general trends, maybe it helps to stop and ask, "How am I measuring this?"