Those Who Care Not For Trees

I realize this is post is intended as a light-hearted sales pitch rather than a deep analysis, but I think the conclusions are misguided.<p>The overriding problem is that you are trying to presenting conclusions based on 300 responses out of 10,000 people surveyed, but never mention the possibility of measurement error. Even ignoring intentionally incorrect responses, considering that these respondents appear "cranky", how many might inverted the 1 to 4 scale? How many might have been one row off?<p>To go further and break down this 3% of respondents into age, region, and income is very prone to overfitting. Are these conclusions consistent across the multiple years of the survey? How many "over 74" tree-haters were there each year? Are they more or less likely to miskey an answer?<p><i>How do you feel about the current number of trees in your city? Too many? About right? Not enough? You probably didn’t answer “Too many."</i><p>Why presume that everyone wants more trees? Is it hard to believe that there might be a point where a neighborhood could have too many, and that different people might have different thresholds for this? Your rhetorical question presumes a strange form of cultural diversity bounded by moral certitude.<p>I've met many Americans raised in the rural West who feel hemmed in by trees. I've met Australian ranchers who consider them to be weeds that steal ground water that could otherwise grow grass. There are numerous accidents caused by obscured street signs, and cities remove trees all the time. I know allergy sufferers everywhere who have very strong opinions on which trees they like and which they despise. And while I love fruit trees, many see them mostly as food for rats.<p>Going one step further, even if you think the study is completely accurate, and the demographic numbers large enough to be significant, the post misses what to me seems like the obvious question: do the responses correlate to the number of trees in each area? Do the areas with fewer trees have more people who want more? Do the areas with the most have the most who are satisfied? If not, why not?<p>Sorry for the vehemence. I'm reading lots of articles lately that misuse statistics, and I don't think this post puts your company in a good light.

Interesting enough. Perhaps 3.9% of the respondents didn't like having their time wasted with a survey, so decided to be deliberately awkward in every response they made. This would seem to fit in with the 'lumberjacks' being older and having a lower income than other respondents: both characteristics can be associated with a kind of hard-nosed practicality and a disdain for treehuggers and silly surveys.<p>I'm sure there's a law somewhere that says that no matter how completely indefensible a position, there is some contrary-minded group who will loudly proclaim allegiance to it. And if there isn't, there is now.<p>(Edit: OP, not suggesting your survey was silly, just that the 3.9% might have thought so.)

I'd expect that many of the responses from people who would prefer less trees are from people who have specific trees that they are annoyed with. For instance, if there are some city-owned trees that make it so you have to clean your gutters often, or that are blocking what would otherwise be a spectacular (and property value boosting) view, I can see thinking that your city has too many trees.

I think calling these people lumberjacks is a bit off, since lumberjacks actually love trees and want to see more of them as well.

Trees are seen as a step towards gentrification to some. Efforts to plant more trees in the tenderloin have been actively rallied against.[1] As they believed the increase in property values they would no longer be able to live there.<p>[1] <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116165781554501615.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116165781554501615.html</a>

Small percentages like these aren't necessarily worth reading much into, and they don't necessarily have anything to do with the question being asked.<p>It could very well be that lower-income, older people (who <i>would</i> disproportionately live in the southwest) are disproportionately likely to make mistakes when filling out surveys.<p>Use of a letter-grade system also introduces error, since the value of a particular letter grade is subjective and has varied over time. It could very well be that older people, who received their own grades before the grade inflation of the last generation, have stricter standards when it comes to assigning letter grades to things.

off-topic: if you link to footnotes, provide a link back to the place I was reading.

Aside from the fact that this survey is worthless because of a gross lack of data - 3% of people surveyed probably don't travel into the city much and live in areas with dense tre growth. If you lived their life you would probably agree with them, instead you question if they are just grumpy.

Are these the same people who litter, or would walk past litter even if it was right in front of them?