How to count down a list of winners
By MUNGAI KIHANYA
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
24 December 2006
Counting isn’t easy. In the final show of the just
concluded “Tusker Project Fame”, the presenters made a small but
significant error. There were four contestants remaining and when the
results of the voting were read out, the fourth placed contestant was
referred to as the “fourth runner-up”.
Now the phrase “runner-up” (or “first runner-up”)
refers to a contestant who finishes second. The third place becomes
second runner up and the fourth is third runner-up. Clearly, in this
particular competition, there was no fourth runner-up (fifth place)
because there were only four contestants!
From another point of view, the counting was wrong
because it did not create the necessary amount of tension for the finale
of a two-month long competition. Counting down from the fourth place to
the first was a mistake.
Abetter strategy would have been to count from third
place. As soon as the name of the second runner-up (third position) is
called, the remaining contestants (and their respective fans)
immediately find themselves at a crossroads. Put yourself in their
shoes: if your name is called next, it means you are the first runner-up
which is not so bad. But it also means that you are not the winner.
On the other hand, if you are left out, it means that
you might be the winner, but you might also be the loser at position
four! So what would you prefer; to be called next or to be left behind?
That puts everybody on edge.
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A lot of anxiety has been generated by recent
research finding to the effect that circumcised men are less likely to
contract the HIV than those who are not. The most interesting question
that I heard was “How did the doctors establish that? Did they ask the
men in the study to go and have unprotected sex with HIV positive
women?”
No! Of course not! That would be illegal and
unethical. The way to go about it is to select a random group of men
that is in similar circumstances except that some are circumcised and
others are not.
That is, the selected group has equal access to AIDS
information engages in sex at (roughly) equal frequency; has equal
number of partners; has partners of similar risk category etc. This
group is observed to see the rate of infection and a comparison is done.
The researchers in this case surveyed a total of
7,780 men half of whom were circumcised. The group comprised of 4,996
Ugandans and 2,784 Kenyans. They found that 90 (43 Ugandans and 47
Kenyans) of the uncircumcised men contacted HIV during the period of the
study while only 44 (22 Ugandans and 22 Kenyans) in the other group got
the virus positive.
What I find more troubling is the fact that the
infection rate in
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