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

[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.

I think you mean bear attacks, not bears, for your example. We're talking about crime, not criminals if I''m not mistaken, and we're talking about risk.
If there are ten people in the woods and twenty in the cafeteria, and each year a single person in the woods is mauled by a bear and two in the cafeteria are mauled the risk is the same, although the fact that you would witness the bear mauling others in the cafeteria would be frightening and stressful.

That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

Bear attacks correlate to proximity to bears, not proximity to bear attacks.

[SuburbanFarmer]

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.

I think you mean bear attacks, not bears, for your example. We're talking about crime, not criminals if I''m not mistaken, and we're talking about risk.
If there are ten people in the woods and twenty in the cafeteria, and each year a single person in the woods is mauled by a bear and two in the cafeteria are mauled the risk is the same, although the fact that you would witness the bear mauling others in the cafeteria would be frightening and stressful.

That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

Bear attacks correlate to proximity to bears, not proximity to bear attacks.

Then one would expect the RATE of bear attacks to reflect the number of bear attacks.

[Okeefenokee]

I think you mean bear attacks, not bears, for your example. We're talking about crime, not criminals if I''m not mistaken, and we're talking about risk.
If there are ten people in the woods and twenty in the cafeteria, and each year a single person in the woods is mauled by a bear and two in the cafeteria are mauled the risk is the same, although the fact that you would witness the bear mauling others in the cafeteria would be frightening and stressful.

That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

Bear attacks correlate to proximity to bears, not proximity to bear attacks.

Then one would expect the RATE of bear attacks to reflect the number of bear attacks.

The rate of bear attacks is extremely low when you don't consider proximity. The rate of bear attacks for people in proximity to bears is much much higher.

Most people don't ever come anywhere close to a bear, so the general bear attack rate across the hundreds of millions of people who live in cities where bears don't go is minimal. That rate doesn't apply accurately to people who go into regions where bears live. Tell a guy hiking in the mountains that the statistical chance of being attacked by a bear is next to zero, and he'll tell you that statistic is bullshit.

It seems like you don't have a firm grasp on the impact of proximity. Being closer to a bear increases your likelihood of being attacked by a bear. Being closer to a criminal, or ten times more criminals as another person, exponentially increases your chances of being a victim of crime.

Must have something to do with why law abiding citizens move away from areas with high numbers of criminals.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Or put yet another way:

If you suddenly found yourself in a crowd when an active shooter opens fire, would you feel safer if the crowd was 40 people instead of 20 people? Probably not. Yet you are twice as likely to get killed in the crowd numbering in the twenties compared to the forties. The statistic doesn't capture what most people think about when they they consider how shitty some situation might be in the context of crime.

This seems to prove my point.

The danger I perceive doesn't reflect the actual danger.

I could flip this around and say that, if I live in a small town that is relatively free of violent crime, one murder might strike me as a huge threat to my safety, when in reality I am obviously much safer than if I lived in Chicago. I am not sure that the argument that my inaccurate perception of danger is a good reason to abandon the per capita metric makes much sense.

You just admitted you are obviously much safer in the small town (with one murder) than you are in Chicago, even though the per capita stat would indicate the small town is almost as dangerous (or maybe even more so, depending upon the population).

Fantastic, we all agree that perception isn't a relevant factor.

I knew we could reach a consensus.

[Okeefenokee]

This seems to prove my point.

The danger I perceive doesn't reflect the actual danger.

I could flip this around and say that, if I live in a small town that is relatively free of violent crime, one murder might strike me as a huge threat to my safety, when in reality I am obviously much safer than if I lived in Chicago. I am not sure that the argument that my inaccurate perception of danger is a good reason to abandon the per capita metric makes much sense.

You just admitted you are obviously much safer in the small town (with one murder) than you are in Chicago, even though the per capita stat would indicate the small town is almost as dangerous (or maybe even more so, depending upon the population).

Fantastic, we all agree that perception isn't a relevant factor.

I knew we could reach a consensus.

Except we weren't talking about subjective perception of danger.

Right now, I'm perceiving the aroma of a crock pot of beans and pork that I can't have.

Damn perception.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

You just admitted you are obviously much safer in the small town (with one murder) than you are in Chicago, even though the per capita stat would indicate the small town is almost as dangerous (or maybe even more so, depending upon the population).

Fantastic, we all agree that perception isn't a relevant factor.

I knew we could reach a consensus.

Except we weren't talking about subjective perception of danger.

Right now, I'm perceiving the aroma of a crock pot of beans and pork that I can't have.

Damn perception.

I agree.

We also excluded the time frame from the discussion, which is also very important.

I would still argue that the per capita crime rate gives you a more realistic idea of how dangerous a place is, and I am having a really hard time understanding the counter argument.

[Okeefenokee]

Fantastic, we all agree that perception isn't a relevant factor.

I knew we could reach a consensus.

Except we weren't talking about subjective perception of danger.

Right now, I'm perceiving the aroma of a crock pot of beans and pork that I can't have.

Damn perception.

I agree.

We also excluded the time frame from the discussion, which is also very important.

I would still argue that the per capita crime rate gives you a more realistic idea of how dangerous a place is, and I am having a really hard time understanding the counter argument.

PROX
I
MI
TY

Georgia has 59,425 square miles. Chicago has 234 square miles. If the two places have the exact same per capita crime rates, ... maybe I've been assuming too much,

per cap·i·ta
pər ˈkapədə/
adverb & adjective
for each person; in relation to people taken individually.

It is a rate that does not take into account area. Only the number of people, no matter how far dispersed they might be.

If the crime rates in those two places, per capita, are the same, the person in Chicago has 253% more crimes being committed in a given radius as the person in Georgia. And because we live in a spacial dimension where the ability to commit a violent crime upon someone requires a minimum proximity, the place with a greater concentration of crime with respect to proximity will have a greater chance of being a victim of said crime.

Going back to my original scenario. If a small town and a large city have the same rate of people running stop signs, but the city has ten times the population, at any given time there are ten times more people running stop signs in the city as there are in the town. The fact that there are ten times more people around you does not negate the fact that in a given radius of fifty meters, you will see ten times more people running stop signs in the city as someone in a town. Apples to apples, the person in the town will have one tenth the number of people running stop signs as the person in the city. So even though your per capita rate is the same, every time you approach a crossing, the number of people who might possibly run that stop sign is ten times greater than it would be in a town.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Who is recommending disregarding area?

[JohnDonne]

e="Okeefenokee"]

That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

Bear attacks correlate to proximity to bears, not proximity to bear attacks.

Then one would expect the RATE of bear attacks to reflect the number of bear attacks.

The rate of bear attacks is extremely low when you don't consider proximity. The rate of bear attacks for people in proximity to bears is much much higher.

Most people don't ever come anywhere close to a bear, so the general bear attack rate across the hundreds of millions of people who live in cities where bears don't go is minimal. That rate doesn't apply accurately to people who go into regions where bears live. Tell a guy hiking in the mountains that the statistical chance of being attacked by a bear is next to zero, and he'll tell you that statistic is bullshit.

It seems like you don't have a firm grasp on the impact of proximity. Being closer to a bear increases your likelihood of being attacked by a bear. Being closer to a criminal, or ten times more criminals as another person, exponentially increases your chances of being a victim of crime.

Must have something to do with why law abiding citizens move away from areas with high numbers of criminals.

If you live near a county jail, there may be high numbers of criminals living and hanging out in the area, that does not mean it's a high-crime area. Law-abiding citizens will certainly try to avoid high-crime areas, I agree with that.

There's a joke about two guys running from a bear. One guy say to the other, "I don't have to out-run the bear, I just have to out-run you."
That kind of illustrates something about proximity, which is, proximity only matters if you're closer than other people. If all the potential victims are close to the bear, and the bear only wants to maul one person per year, the risk is the same as if all the potential victims were farther away from the bear.

The bears will maul a predetermined amount of people, degree of proximity doesn't change the risk so long as your proximity is more or less equal to the other potential victims.

Proximity also stops mattering after a certain point. The middle of Mars is virtually as bear free as the middle of the ocean. Upper East side New Yorkers may for all I know be as virtually safe from ghetto robbers as a guy sitting in his barn.

[JohnDonne]

Except we weren't talking about subjective perception of danger.

Right now, I'm perceiving the aroma of a crock pot of beans and pork that I can't have.

Damn perception.

I agree.

We also excluded the time frame from the discussion, which is also very important.

I would still argue that the per capita crime rate gives you a more realistic idea of how dangerous a place is, and I am having a really hard time understanding the counter argument.

PROX
I
MI
TY

Georgia has 59,425 square miles. Chicago has 234 square miles. If the two places have the exact same per capita crime rates, ... maybe I've been assuming too much,

per cap·i·ta
pər ˈkapədə/
adverb & adjective
for each person; in relation to people taken individually.

It is a rate that does not take into account area. Only the number of people, no matter how far dispersed they might be.

If the crime rates in those two places, per capita, are the same, the person in Chicago has 253% more crimes being committed in a given radius as the person in Georgia. And because we live in a spacial dimension where the ability to commit a violent crime upon someone requires a minimum proximity, the place with a greater concentration of crime with respect to proximity will have a greater chance of being a victim of said crime.

Going back to my original scenario. If a small town and a large city have the same rate of people running stop signs, but the city has ten times the population, at any given time there are ten times more people running stop signs in the city as there are in the town. The fact that there are ten times more people around you does not negate the fact that in a given radius of fifty meters, you will see ten times more people running stop signs in the city as someone in a town. Apples to apples, the person in the town will have one tenth the number of people running stop signs as the person in the city. So even though your per capita rate is the same, every time you approach a crossing, the number of people who might possibly run that stop sign is ten times greater than it would be in a town.

Yeah but if the city has ten times more stop signs then the risk is spread out the same, just like if there are ten times more potential victims and the rate of crime is the same per capita, the risk of being a victim is spread out the same.