Missionary numbers drop more

[cinepro]

5 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Interesting stat  someone put up tracking missionary numbers to births 18 years earlier and seminary enrollment. Matches nearly identically. He carries the analysis to the future a ways. Probably a reasonably accurate prediction of future numbers. By these numbers we're slightly ahead of trend.

For the record, here is what the actual LDS Seminary enrollment numbers look like for 1988 - 2012.  As far as I know, there is no reliable source of data for the number of births in the Church since they changed how they report the stats in 1997, which would be a critical year for the period under consideration.

https://www.lds.org/manual/by-study-and-also-by-faith/appendix/appendix-6-seminary-and-institute-enrollment-by-year-1912-2013?lang=eng

Edited June 6, 2017 by cinepro

[cinepro]

3 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

How did he/she get his/her graph to match the surge so perfectly? I'd love to see the source data. 

I think it's an example of "faithful statistics."

 

He posted an additional graph which would seem to indicate his curve is fiction:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y_MdJautkkxjnMyCzVmNMWDA-BifmkbmJBcH37oavmc/pubchart?oid=219781208&format=interactive

If the "Increase in Children of Record" is births, then the years 1997 - 1999 would be the critical years, and those show an increase in number on his chart, not a decrease.

Edited June 6, 2017 by cinepro

[Bernard Gui]

14 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Hey, man!  What's in the peace pipe!  I want summa that action! 

 

Well, let's see. There's Postum and Pero and herbal teas, no-caffeine Coke and Pepsi, non-alcoholic beer and wine, so there has to be something we can smoke in good conscience!

I like smoked salmon, sausages, and cheese, but it's hard to get them lit in a pipe.

 

Edited June 7, 2017 by Bernard Gui

[clarkgoble]

16 minutes ago, cinepro said:

For the record, here is what the actual LDS Seminary enrollment numbers look like for 1988 - 2012.  As far as I know, there is no reliable source of data for the number of births in the Church since they changed how they report the stats in 1997, which would be a critical year for the period under consideration.

If you read his latest post he explains he's estimating births from the seminary data. He linked to a graph with that data

It's still not clear what fitting equation he is using between births and missions though.

 

 

Edited June 6, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Kenngo1969]

5 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

... I like smoked salmon, sausages, and cheese, but it's hard to get them lit in a pipe.

 

OK.  We can skip the pipe.  What time's dinner?  

[Calm]

5 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'd be very surprised in Provo MTC numbers don't resemble worldwide numbers. Again, just going by driving by the ⅕ - ⅓ guess seems about right although it looks closer to the ⅕ based upon missionaries crossing the street.

I would think Americans and Canadians probably have a higher rate of sister missionaries than other places (almost pure speculation, but a little foundation based on friends not in the US or Canada's stories).  I would be very interested to see data.

[clarkgoble]

49 minutes ago, cinepro said:

I think it's an example of "faithful statistics."

He posted an additional graph which would seem to indicate his curve is fiction:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y_MdJautkkxjnMyCzVmNMWDA-BifmkbmJBcH37oavmc/pubchart?oid=219781208&format=interactive

If the "Increase in Children of Record" is births, then the years 1997 - 1999 would be the critical years, and those show an increase in number on his chart, not a decrease.

Don't forget about the age change. I hope he explains in more detail his methadology and give the raw numbers. But of course without including the 19→18 year change you can't get the graph.

[cinepro]

7 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Don't forget about the age change. I hope he explains in more detail his methadology and give the raw numbers. But of course without including the 19→18 year change you can't get the graph.

Right, but there was no "age-change" for seminary or births.  That's what's so suspicious.  How do you create a methodology that almost perfectly "predicts" the bump from a change in the missionary age range, and then perfectly predicts the downturn?  It's obvious that the best statisticians in the COB don't have that prediction power, so if he was able to do it with just the public data, he's supernaturally brilliant.

[Calm]

13 minutes ago, cinepro said:

Right, but there was no "age-change" for seminary or births.  That's what's so suspicious.  How do you create a methodology that almost perfectly "predicts" the bump from a change in the missionary age range, and then perfectly predicts the downturn?  It's obvious that the best statisticians in the COB don't have that prediction power, so if he was able to do it with just the public data, he's supernaturally brilliant.

He adjusts for the age change in part by doubling the rate of sister missionaries (saw this from another quote, haven't read yet) from 1 in 8 going to 1 in 4, so the seminary rate gets doubled for females (assuming he gets a male female ratio at that age somewhere or just does 50/50 sothat would be around a quarter increase there,right?)  He needs to justify that choice and may for all I known.

 

Edited June 6, 2017 by Calm

[SeekingUnderstanding]

4 hours ago, pogi said:

Clark's link has the source data and explanation:

 

He/she is massaging the data way too much.

In the attached graph, I have plotted members of record (which has an 8 year gap). Plotted along side this, I took the seminary numbers divided by 4 (since most attend 4 years) offset by 16 years (so that the seminary numbers and the birth numbers should line up). I also added the number of missionaries in the field offset by 20 years based on an average age for missionaries serving. I don't see any reason why one would believe they could estimate birth rates based on seminary enrollment from this data. 

Edited June 6, 2017 by SeekingUnderstanding

[SeekingUnderstanding]

15 minutes ago, cinepro said:

Right, but there was no "age-change" for seminary or births.  That's what's so suspicious.  How do you create a methodology that almost perfectly "predicts" the bump from a change in the missionary age range, and then perfectly predicts the downturn?  It's obvious that the best statisticians in the COB don't have that prediction power, so if he was able to do it with just the public data, he's supernaturally brilliant.

Basically he has put some fudge factors in his model that he made up and changes from time to time to fit the past data (almost perfectly). Since he just made these fudge factors up, it means that the predictive power of his model is zero.

[Johnnie Cake]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

If you read his latest post he explains he's estimating births from the seminary data. He linked to a graph with that data

It's still not clear what fitting equation he is using between births and missions though.

 

 

I think the Production of Potatoes in Pakistan has a closer relationship to the collapse of Male missionaries in the LDS church than do these seminary stats. At least there's an actual surge

Edited June 6, 2017 by Johnnie Cake

[Johnnie Cake]

Or maybe the correlation in the missionary downturn is due to the surge and collapse in newspaper advertising revenue...

 

Edited June 6, 2017 by Johnnie Cake

[clarkgoble]

I think the snark is a bit premature guys. He put a link up with his raw data. My wife is ill from pregnancy so I'll be busy the next few hours but I'll try and take a look at the numbers later this evening. 

Edited June 6, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Calm]

23 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I think the snark is a bit premature guys. He put a link up with his raw data. My wife is ill from pregnancy so I'll be busy the next few hours but I'll try and take a look at the numbers later this evening. 

Wish your wife well.  Pregnancy can be intense.

[cinepro]

Ultimately, a huge part of the concern could be the falling number of converts per missionary:

 

https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2017/04/converts-per-missionary-revisited/

There are a lot of great things about missionary work other than baptizing people, but at some point it feels like you've spent your whole life preparing to play in the big game and now you're on the team, but you're sitting on the sidelines.  Everyone likes the idea of nobly sacrificing to bring souls to God, but nobly sacrificing only to the annoyance of other people isn't quite so enticing.  Either that number starts to miraculously turn around, or we will start to see massive amounts of "expectation management" in missionary prep.

 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

4 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I think the snark is a bit premature guys. He put a link up with his raw data. My wife is ill from pregnancy so I'll be busy the next few hours but I'll try and take a look at the numbers later this evening. 

 

Just a cursory look:

Problem one: Pre-1989 data for births is extrapolated from children of record baptized instead of children of record. Post 1996 data is children of record. This is an apples and oranges comparison. For example, in 1981 111,000 children of record were announced. 8 years later in 1989, 75,000 of those were baptized. So when he is fitting the seminary data to this data, it's not going to work.

 

ETA: What this means is that the past is based on the lower children of record baptized, while future projections are based on the significantly higher new members of record...

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1982/04/statistical-report-1981?lang=eng

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1990/04/statistical-report-1989?lang=eng

 

Problem two: In order to fit the past data, he changes the percentage of ym/yw serving to get a perfect fit. This is fine as far as it goes, but since the model requires year by year adjustment to fit the data, it is useless to use to try and predict the future.

Edited June 7, 2017 by SeekingUnderstanding

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Just a cursory look:Problem one: Pre-1989 data for births is extrapolated from children of record baptized instead of children of record. Post 1996 data is children of record. This is an apples and oranges comparison. For example, in 1981 111,000 children of record were announced. 8 years later in 1989, 75,000 of those were baptized. So when he is fitting the seminary data to this data, it's not going to work.

He did acknowledge that although it's increase in children of record and not children of record. He's not doing a one to one relationship but arguing one is a proxy for the other but has to be adjusted. I've not yet had time to go over the data in depth, but while that would limit future predictions if retention is about the same I don't think that should change things much.

Quote

Problem two: In order to fit the past data, he changes the percentage of ym/yw serving to get a perfect fit. This is fine as far as it goes, but since the model requires year by year adjustment to fit the data, it is useless to use to try and predict the future.

Yes, if the rate of men goes down or the rate of women goes up then his prediction will be off. Given the recent change in women that's a fair criticism although his approximations still fit the curve pretty closely so I'm not sure it's that big a criticism.

Certainly if variables the prediction depend on change then the predictions will be off. But that's true of any prediction which is why you shouldn't trust future predictions terribly far. As my stats teacher drilled into us for every trend there is an end.

Edit: Never mind I missed his extra tabs

Now that I've gone through his numbers it all seems to work. The only figures I can't figure out are the constants he modifies the senior couples by.

Edited June 7, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Bernard Gui]

7 hours ago, cinepro said:

Ultimately, a huge part of the concern could be the falling number of converts per missionary:

 

https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2017/04/converts-per-missionary-revisited/

There are a lot of great things about missionary work other than baptizing people, but at some point it feels like you've spent your whole life preparing to play in the big game and now you're on the team, but you're sitting on the sidelines.  Everyone likes the idea of nobly sacrificing to bring souls to God, but nobly sacrificing only to the annoyance of other people isn't quite so enticing.  Either that number starts to miraculously turn around, or we will start to see massive amounts of "expectation management" in missionary prep.

 

Why should this be a concern?

 

[Kenngo1969]

Quote

[Cynic Pro, I mean Cinepro;  Sorry; Always get you guys confused!]

There are a lot of great things about missionary work other than baptizing people, but at some point it feels like you've spent your whole life preparing to play in the big game and now you're on the team, but you're sitting on the sidelines.  Everyone likes the idea of nobly sacrificing to bring souls to God, but nobly sacrificing only to the annoyance of other people isn't quite so enticing.  Either that number starts to miraculously turn around, or we will start to see massive amounts of "expectation management" in missionary prep.

In terms of sheer numbers, Mormon's son, Moroni was a horrible missionary. Notwithstanding all of his efforts to bring souls to Christ, all of his efforts to exhort an apostate nation to faithfulness fell on deaf ears.  In light of that, there were only three things he could do: (1) save his own skin until his earthly mission was complete; (2) preserve the records entrusted to him and complete his abridgment; (3) stand as a silent witness to the tragic downfall of his people.  

And are we concerned about the numbers ("falling converts per missionary" ), or are we more concerned about the people (you know, real, live, flesh-and-blood human beings with fears, and perhaps prejudices, and pesky, annoying free will all their own) behind the numbers?  And as much as we might emphasize the "how-great-shall-be-your-joy-if-ye-shall-bring-many-souls-unto-me" clause in Doctrine & Covenants 18, perhaps we ought to emphasize the "if-ye-should-labor-all-your-days-and-should-bring-save-it-be-one-soul-unto-me-how-great-shall-be-your-joy-with-him-in-the-Kingdom-of-my-Father" clause far more than we do.

Well?  How'd I do managing expectations?

Edited June 7, 2017 by Kenngo1969

[SeekingUnderstanding]

10 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

He did acknowledge that although it's increase in children of record and not children of record. He's not doing a one to one relationship but arguing one is a proxy for the other but has to be adjusted. I've not yet had time to go over the data in depth, but while that would limit future predictions if retention is about the same I don't think that should change things much.

He's not doing any adjusting, but instead assuming they are equivalent. They are not. I replaced the baptized members of record data with increase children of record and then refitted his seminary data and came up with the following (a much different picture no?):

 

 

Quote

Yes, if the rate of men goes down or the rate of women goes up then his prediction will be off. Given the recent change in women that's a fair criticism although his approximations still fit the curve pretty closely so I'm not sure it's that big a criticism.

Certainly if variables the prediction depend on change then the predictions will be off. But that's true of any prediction which is why you shouldn't trust future predictions terribly far. As my stats teacher drilled into us for every trend there is an end.

Edit: Never mind I missed his extra tabs

Now that I've gone through his numbers it all seems to work. The only figures I can't figure out are the constants he modifies the senior couples by.

It's not like he took a survey to find out how what percent young men serve missions, rather he changes the percent until he gets a good match. This is highly problematic especially since he changes it so frequently. It makes it look like a much tighter fit.

Starting in March 2002, YM 54%. November 2002 50%, December 47%; Jan 2003 43%; Jan 2004 44%; Jan 2005 45%; Jan 2006 46%; Jan 2007 44%, Jan 2011 45%; Jan 2012 46%

Edited June 7, 2017 by SeekingUnderstanding

[stemelbow]

22 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Interesting stat  someone put up tracking missionary numbers to births 18 years earlier and seminary enrollment. Matches nearly identically. He carries the analysis to the future a ways. Probably a reasonably accurate prediction of future numbers. By these numbers we're slightly ahead of trend.

This makes the question of what in the world Elder Holland and brethren were thinking back when they told us the numbers would only rise after they reached 85,000. 

[Bernard Gui]

21 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Happy Jack Wagon:

I realize I have been rather strident in my disagreement with you, and that wasn't warranted.  I apologize.  (Though you have a history of treating even that with some degree of contempt, what you choose to do with it is up to you.)  The truth is, I don't know why some ARP group leaders and others are called as missionaries, while others are not.  However, while I do not know the reason, I'm reluctant to conclude that it has anything to do with conferring any sort of "dear-Lord-I-thank-thee-that-I-am-not-as-other-men-are" status.  If that's how anyone is approaching one's call as a missionary, s/he should repent.  That said, I do believe there is a mantle that comes with missionary service.  Such a call as a missionary could have to do with inspiration received concerning the area by local leaders; it could even have to do with inspiration regarding specific people received by local leaders; it could be a way of impressing upon one so called the gravity of the calling (especially if one might otherwise be tempted to treat the calling as trivial or mundane); and, as Calm has pointed out, it could be a way of allowing someone to open doors, to plant seeds, and to harvest seeds when such opportunities otherwise would be unavailable. I reiterate my earlier assertion that the matter of why someone might be called to do something as a missionary is worthy of serious consideration, pondering of any specific blessings conferred in the setting apart, and perhaps consultation with the file leader who issued the call.  I certainly wouldn't simply say (though I'm not accusing you of this necessarily, if the shoe fits ...), "Oh, look!  I have a cute little black or white name tag!"

Again, my apologies.

Regards,

-Ken

Our handbook says 

Quote

GROUP LEADER

Group leaders conduct ARP meetings and help program participants. Group leaders are usually called and set apart as part-time Church-service missionaries or stake welfare specialists, or they may serve as volunteers. Group leaders conduct the recovery and support meetings, ensure that meetings are run properly, and provide brief instruction and testimony to participants. Prospective group leaders fill out a Recommendation for Church-Service Missionary form, available online or through distribution centers (item PD50021834), and submit the completed form to their bishop or branch president. 

ARP program coordinators and group leaders wear two hats. They are called and set apart as missionaries by local priesthood authorities with approval from SLC and work under their supervision, but are trained by and report to LDS Family Services. The stake president makes the decision about the calling as a missionary, a stake specialist, or a volunteer. If we are called as missionaries, we are expected to follow Family Services guidelines and use their materials exclusively, wear the badge when serving, and observe the missionary dress code. The stake president can devise another program if he wishes, but I think that may be the exception, not the rule. Not all stakes have programs, but the movement is spreading as the needs increase.

Whatever the situation may be, it is a great blessing and in many cases a life-saver. Though it can be emotionally and spiritually wrenching, it is the best calling we have ever had.

Edited June 7, 2017 by Bernard Gui

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

It's not like he took a survey to find out how what percent young men serve missions, rather he changes the percent until he gets a good match. This is highly problematic especially since he changes it so frequently. It makes it look like a much tighter fit.

Starting in March 2002, YM 54%. November 2002 50%, December 47%; Jan 2003 43%; Jan 2004 44%; Jan 2005 45%; Jan 2006 46%; Jan 2007 44%, Jan 2011 45%; Jan 2012 46%

That's a good point. Although now that I look closely your figures seem off. On my spreadsheet it's 46% from '93 onward. So I don't think he's doing curve fitting there although he appears to be before.

Edited June 7, 2017 by clarkgoble

[cinepro]

6 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

And are we concerned about the numbers ("falling converts per missionary" ), or are we more concerned about the people (you know, real, live, flesh-and-blood human beings with fears, and perhaps prejudices, and pesky, annoying free will all their own) behind the numbers?  And as much as we might emphasize the "how-great-shall-be-your-joy-if-ye-shall-bring-many-souls-unto-me" clause in Doctrine & Covenants 18, perhaps we ought to emphasize the "if-ye-should-labor-all-your-days-and-should-bring-save-it-be-one-soul-unto-me-how-great-shall-be-your-joy-with-him-in-the-Kingdom-of-my-Father" clause far more than we do.

Well?  How'd I do managing expectations?

Obviously the Church can emphasize whatever they want to.  Maybe the reduced conversion numbers aren't even a factor.  I don't know.  But based on the numbers in this thread, I'm not sure the Church leadership knows either.