OT Environmentalists may be in deep Kimchee

I can see his point, and look forward to him continuing to making it, hopefully ever more stridently.

Haha! Guido, you are an instigator and shit-stirrer of rare ability.

Maybe he'll be able to increase his swearing content a bit. That certainly will make it more convincing...

Ed Huntress

I guess I must have missed something while taking a shower and washing out my eyes after reading one of Gunner's posts. Arson isn't reported as a crime in the National Crime Index? And fraud isn't? And drug offenses aren't? Drug offenses?? Right in the middle of a national war on drugs, we're not even keeping score??

And there are similar kinds of selectivity in other countries' reporting of crimes? But we're still spending megabytes of bandwidth to debate the idea that one place or another has a higher/lower crime rate, and to argue about how an armed (or not) population does or doesn't affect all these numbers that we can't compare, standardize, or accept with certainty in the first place?

Shit! If THAT kind of logic is permissible, then I'm going to make a fortune selling drill grinders. My competitors won't know what hit them!

"The average paint on my machines is 75% THICKER than the film of oil on the slideways on my competitor's machines. Thicker is better!"

"I use high only quality iron castings for the critical structural parts of my grinder, but my competitors use cheap PLASTIC for the keypad buttons on their controls. That's an IMPORTANT difference!"

"My competitors claim that their machines will position at 800 IPM in rapid mode; but my machines have been clocked at over 76 THOUSAND inches per minute, (72 miles per hour), while being delivered by truck to customers' plants. Clearly, only a fool would think the competitor's machine makes any sense at all."

I can't WAIT to try this out on my customers. They'll be SO impressed! I'll probably need a gun to protect myself while I'm carrying all my money to the bank!

KG

Heh.......

But what this all has to do with the price of tea in China is *all* I wanna to know.

That's correct. It's not in the basic UCR, and it isn't reported to Interpol. The DoJ goes into a long discussion of why it can't be compared to our other crime stats in one of their publications, but here's the simple fact about it, from the 2001 UCR:

"Arson was added to the Index in 1979 by congressional mandate, and the UCR Program established the Modified Crime Index to include arson. More information regarding the Crime Index can be found in Appendix II of this report."

We track it, and there is a special report that includes it, but it's not in the basic Uniform Crime Report, only in the "Modified" report. Thus, it's not in Interpol's figures.

Correct.

There's no money in the budget to do it. The FBI just tracks what Congress tells it to track.

They DO, however, track drug *arrests*, which we can assume are somewhat lower than the recorded crimes. If a drug crime doesn't result in an arrest, it's probably harder to tell that a crime has been committed in this category than in most others. Where was the victim, or where was the damage? That's the problem.

Here are the arrest figures from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. This is federal:

"Of the 115,589 offenders arrested by Federal law enforcement agencies in

2000, 28% were arrested for drug offenses."

This is the state/local for 2001:

627,132 arrests for violent crimes (murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) 1,618,465 arrests for property crimes (burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson) 1,586,902 drug-related arrests

Not as much, and some countries have really extensive lists. Interpol sends out a questionnaire and the central police offices of the countries fill them out. In the case of the US, we have nothing to fill in the blanks except the National Crime Index. Take a look at what Germany reports for comparison. (I posted the link in an earlier message.)

I'M not debating it. Richard the d*****ad is debating it. There is no debate. The reports are clear enough that a 2nd grader could see what's going on. That leaves Richard out, of course.

Ed Huntress

Gunner posted a quote from some blog to the effect that the US has much less total crime than major European countries, based on Interpol reports. It isn't so, which is what the discussion has been about ever since.

Our overall crime levels are similar to those of France and Germany, but considerably lower than those of England/Wales.

Ed Huntress

My favorite has always been "Dumber than God made a keg of nails."

Happy New Year

Mike Eberle> >

Well, Duhh......I knew that all along, Ed.

Its all about attempting to correlate two or more sets of facts or statistics that are at often best remotely connected so as to represent a single "fact" in order to promote some agenda.

Kirk said it quite well IMO.........

Suppose, for instance, one set of data is gathered as to the price fluctuations of tea in China over a period of time.

Another set of data is gathered concerning deadly automobile accidents in the USA over the same time frame.......

Suppose further, when one chart moved positive, the other moved negatively more or less, and did so throughout several cycles over the time period.

Would this mean there is a definite correlation between the two data sets ???

Why, of course not !!!

But in fact, it is exactly this type of ( Faulty ) statistical comparison that is *very* frequently used, and presented in order to sway people's opinion on any number of topics and agendas..........it is simply one area where statistics and probability cross the line from being legitimate tools, useful for scientific analysis into the realm of being nothing other than pure propaganda.

Which type of tea were you interested in ?

Why, whatever type makes idiot drivers in the US cause less accidents, of course..........

Ya got any ???

Sure, and your point, although a little rough around the edges, is essentially correct. Attributing causative relationships to mere coincidences is one of the ways statistics are misunderstood, and a way they're sometimes intentionally misused.

This is a difficult example, though, because it requires some understanding of when correlations become meaningful. A couple of weeks ago I quoted here from a statistics consultant about exactly this subject, in which he described the common kind of after-the-fact regression analysis as junk science. Data mining as it's practiced today by unsophisticated marketers and by political parties often is that kind of junk science. It stops being junk science when the correlation actually predicts events as well as describing historical relationships. It doesn't have to show the pattern of causation in order to be useful, but it does have to accurately predict events, or it's just junk.

There are many ways in which statistics are misused and abused, many of them simpler to follow than your example. The Interpol case is a good one. What they've compiled is data that allows you to see what's happening to crime within individual countries over time, but not much else. Because one country counts only apples, while another counts only oranges, it's useless for comparing fruit from one country with fruit from another. The statistics are basically good for their intended purpose, in other words, but complete junk when someone tries to make a different and improper use of the data.

that'd be the thousand-dollar-a-pound stuff, probably ...

you must be joking ! :-)

I dunno bout Sam, but I'll take some Mushroom tea if ya got any.

I need it to put up with the opinionated loons if ya know what I mean.....

Y'all got cows over ther right?

Bing

With regards to the "apples and oranges" aspect of the argument, I'd guess that anyone still reading the thread sees the problem. I've got my doubts as to how many folks are still reading the thread, though.

WRT to the "tree stump" analogy, I think you can do better. In my neck of the woods, at least, the tree stumps are blissfully quiet.

Thinking of analogies reminds of the old saws about arguing with idiots and wrestling with pigs.

R, Tom Q.

That is the key point, Tom. You're right. I've agreed with that from the beginning. The problem is, as I said, the only time anyone falls back to pointing out and arguing apples and oranges is when the argument is lost beyond that point. The idiot formerly known as ed only fell back to arguing the apples to oranges aspect because he was proven blatantly wrong on the "crime" part.

It's no different from that other idiot earlier trying to argue the definition of "permit" when he was proven wrong about the states requiring permits.

ral

Not the only time. Sometimes they do that, when a false analogy is presented.

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Richard, are you still claiming that we have no drug crimes if the Fed doesn't report them? Or are you saying now that you agree with what I said from the beginning, and you figure that no one notices what you just tried to do?

YOU were the one who said that the crime figures are "whatever the government said they are," stupidly assuming that the National Crime Index is a report of all crimes.

Now you seem to have recognized your mistake and you're trying to weasel out of it, eh, d*****ad?

What a phony you are.

Ed Huntress

It is? Funny, I didn't see you quote anything to do with crime, idiot....all you've argued so far was that the source quoted was somehow wrong in your opinion. You haven't discussed "crime" at all.

If we're quoting crime, where are the numbers? State them once and give their source and let's all look them over.

Apples to apples, remember.

ral

With all due respect, I think you misunderstood me. Ed was pointing out that apples and oranges are different, only because you didn't seem to grasp the difference. Perfectly logical argument, IMHO. Also a futile argument, in this case.

FWIW, I blame Ed more than you for pursuing it this far; I've come to expect better of _him_. That's entirely my problem, though - I don't expect either one of you will have to cry yourself to sleep due to my opinion.

R, Tom Q.