"Dummy Tables" are not labelled "dummy" in the way that Books for Dummies are. They are NOT tables for dummies! They are tables that are virtual, not real. And that term has nothing to do with the Internet and Virtual Reality. Statisticians have always used "dummy tables" to help them visualize their data in relationship to their theory, their data gathering methods, and the hypotheses they hope to support. "Dummy tables" are real world ways to help you visualize. You should never undertake a research project without exploring "dummy tables" on the project. This the statistician's way of planning out his/her work.

To give you an idea of the importance of dummy tables we want to explore some figures from Joan Claybrook's "Women in the Market Place," in Szockyj and Fox's Corporate Victimization of Women. There are no tables in this chapter. But there are lots of percentages and numbers strewn about. We're going to construct together some dummy tables, so you can see how much they help clarify the writing.

1. Breast Implants

   The first time numbers are given in the text, on p. 113, we are told that a verdict in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California awarded $840,000 in compensatory damages and $6.5 million in punitive damages to Maria Hopkins in her suit against Dow Corning. "Hopkins, who had the prostheses implanted following a double mastectomy in 1976, suffered from mixed-tissue disease, a debilitating immune disorder, resulting from her exposure to silicone gel."

   Table 1: Outcomes of Law Suits on Silicone Breast Implants

   Outcomes of Silicone Law Suits
   Compensatory Damages	Punitive Damages	Case Name and Reason for Implant	Date of Injury	Date of Award	Fraud?

   These categories came from an overall perusal of the chapter, which suggests that punitive damages are dropped after the first major cases are won, that compensatory damages become far less than adequate, that it matters a lot who the plaintiff is, even when dealing with cases other than breast implants, which are mostly done for cosmetic reasons, and that the first cases are not won for many, many years. We added fraud because of our interest in defining such corporate behavior as crime. Notice that when you see this in table form it leaps out at you more effectively than when it is explained in traditional paragraph format.

   Now, let's try to put the information we have so far into the above table:

   Table 1: Outcomes of Law Suits on Silicone Breast Implants

   Outcomes of Silicone Law Suits
   Page Source	Compensatory Damages	Punitive Damages	Case Name and Reason for Implant	Date of Injury	Date of Award	Fraud?
   P. 113	$840,000	$6.5 million	Mariann Hopkins Reconstructive surgery	1976	December 1991	Clear and convincing evidence of fraud

   The next instance of information where we need to structure our thinking is on p. 114. Claybook begins to speak of the secrecy on which Dow Corning insisted for all information it could control on the safety of its silicone implants. In this instance, we will want to know whether information was able to litigants, to the courts, to doctors, to potential patients, to the public . And we will need to know what information existed. Table 1 won't do for this information. So we'll begin Table 2:

   Table 2: Information Availability on Silicone Breast Implants

   Availability and Types of Information on Silicone Implants
   Importance of Information	Evidence used in court	Publications	Product Literature	In-House Research and Discussion	Page Source
   To Women Plaintiffs	---	---	---	---	---
   To Corporate Defendants	---	---	---	---	---
   To Potential Users of Implant Device Doctors and Patients	---	---	---	---	---

   Now, having struggled to figure out what information I really want from the chapter, and having got it into a dummy table format, I can go back through the chapter and enter information into my table. Here's my dummy table filled in:

   Table 2: Information Availability on Silicone Breast Implants

   Availability and Types of Information on Silicone Implants
   Importance of Information	Evidence Used in Court	Publicatiions	Product Information	In-House Research and Discussion	Page Source
   Crucial to lawsuit for women plaintiffs.	Held in absolute secrecy under court seal.	Only referred to in opinion. Says clear and convincing evid. of fraud, but doesn't give evidence.	Never mentioned.	Available only to corporate defendant.	P. 114
   Crucial to corporate defendants	Owned by corporation.	Referred to only in Opinion.	Never mentioned	Available only to coprorate defendant.	P. 114.
   Crucial To Potential Users of Implant Device, to Doctors and Patients	---	---	---	---	---

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