General Discussion

1StrongBlackMan

(31,849 posts)

14. I think ...

Mon Jun 3, 2013, 11:27 PM

Jun 2013

in your police example, you have it a little reversed ... Shouldn't it read:

Let's say that in a given town 80% of the arrests for violent crime are of whites. From that isolated fact, it cannot be determined that the town's police are racist or not.

Then it's pointed out that only 3% of the town is ~~non-white~~ White. Are the town's police racist? Probably.

Likewise, there is not enough information to support the first part of your "of the White House" example.

Your final example is more supportable; depending on the characteristics and what happenned with the other 90.

But I completely agree, most arguments rely on innumeracy ... but more troubling, the press (that really should know better) push these narratives, without bothering to have a statistician (or at least someone that took and passed a grad-level Research Methods/Stats class).

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