THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON'T GIVE A FUCK!!!

[jbird4049]

Consider running stop signs per capita.

A city of two million can have the same rate as a town of ten thousand.

The city has two hundred times more people running stop signs than the town.

Are they the same?

Yes. You have an equal chance of getting T-boned in either place.

Statistics is hard.

And there you have it.

GCF thinks having two hundred times more people running stop signs is the same as a place with 1/200 the same number.

Part of my job, actually, a large part of my job, is dealing with people who are not good at math.

Stop pretending you know anything about math.

Yes they are as a percentage, if not by absolute numbers. Only going by the rates can one make accurate comparisons.

[Fife]

[Okeefenokee]

You would not represent the two scenarios as being equivalent, and be considered honest. Misleading outcomes like that get pointed out all the time.

For instance, you would need to include population density (I mean literal proximity) to get closer to the truth, and then your numbers wouldn't be the same anymore.

Similarly, bear attack statistics.

[Okeefenokee]

Yes. You have an equal chance of getting T-boned in either place.

Statistics is hard.

And there you have it.

GCF thinks having two hundred times more people running stop signs is the same as a place with 1/200 the same number.

Part of my job, actually, a large part of my job, is dealing with people who are not good at math.

Stop pretending you know anything about math.

Yes they are as a percentage, if not by absolute numbers. Only going by the rates can one make accurate comparisons.

By only going by the rates you get inaccurate comparisons.

[Martin Hash]

I can't tell what Okee is arguing? Is he saying that using percentages is not the way to make engineering decisions? That you go by raw numbers? Can't be...

A Concentrated-wealth guy (Republican) was debating me on a Conservative forum, and he made the declaration that The Rich pay a LOT of taxes, and you have to go by the dollar amount, not the percentage. I couldn't continue the argument after that; lost cause.

[Speaker to Animals]

The point is that the per capita statistic is mostly useless in this context. It makes sense only in terms of figuring out funding, etc.

The more I think about it, the more clear it is that the statistic is not even helpful to figure out the direct risk to yourself.

Most of the murders in these cities are perpetrated by a particular demographic against themselves. I lived in Chicago. Nobody tried to gun me down. But I tried to avoid those neighborhoods, and if I walked by there, I stayed on the sidewalk used by commuters to the train station, careful not to actually go into the projects themselves. Nobody messed with me.

But you have to realize that living around a high percentage of a demographic that does perpetrate this kind of violence (even if mostly against one another) comes as a cost to you. It comes as a cost to blight. It comes as a cost to your taxes. It comes as a cost to at least a little bit of concern regarding your security with respect to the crime they do perpetrate against others.

The per capita stat really doesn't tell you anything about the quality of life.

And, like I said before, not even the liberals give a shit about it. Liberals are concerned about the absolute numbers too. Turn on the television and watch MSNBC where they bemoan however many "gun deaths" occurred in a particular city so far this year. They are still dishonest about what they are dealing with, but they don't hide the fact that they care about the absolute numbers. They don't say, "OMG! Chicago has 16.4 homicides per 10,000 people last year!". They give us the raw numbers. That's what motivates even them.

For them to come on here and tell me that I should really only care about the per capita stat is silly. Get real.

[Okeefenokee]

I can't tell what Okee is arguing? Is he saying that using percentages is not the way to make engineering decisions? That you go by raw numbers? Can't be...

A Concentrated-wealth guy (Republican) was debating me on a Conservative forum, and he made the declaration that The Rich pay a LOT of taxes, and you have to go by the dollar amount, not the percentage. I couldn't continue the argument after that; lost cause.

If the presence of bears per capita is the same in a national park as it is in a school cafeteria, does the person in the room with the bears have a statistically equal chance of being attacked as the person with several miles between him and the nearest bear? Say it's ten bears and one person in the park, and in the cafeteria. Per capita, the rates are the same. Anybody see where this approach might have a flaw?

That is what is being asserted by saying the per capita rates mean crime in cities is the same as outside a city.

[Martin Hash]

Dude, you need a better example. Google something; this concept has been around a long time and all the arguments have been made before.

[Okeefenokee]

Dude, you need a better example. Google something; this concept has been around a long time and all the arguments have been made before.

If per capita rates of crimes are equal between a town and city, but the city has ten times the population density, the city and the town are not the same. Living in the city you are going to have ten times more crime around than you would in the town.

If you need to google something to understand that, bye.

[Martin Hash]

Dude, you need a better example. Google something; this concept has been around a long time and all the arguments have been made before.

If per capita rates of crimes are equal between a town and city, but the city has ten times the population density, the city and the town are not the same. Living in the city you are going to have ten times more crime around than you would in the town.

If you need to google something to understand that, bye.

Are you not normalizing for area? Dude, you have to normalize if you're going to multiply unit vectors.