What Mega Millions Can Teach Us About Trayvon Martin Backlash [View all]

[Ian David]

What Mega Millions Can Teach Us About Trayvon Martin Backlash

<snip>

Now, what does this have to do with the Trayvon Martin case, you ask? Take a look at Pat Buchanan’s column. Now this column is stupid for a number of reasons that many others can make much stronger arguments about than I. But I’d like to focus on the stupidity of his statistical logic. Essentially, his thesis is that, because African-American and Latino men are responsible for more crimes than other Americans, it is only logical that they be profiled. This is not a new argument, and while it is certainly offensive, it is actually quite compelling to people’s poor understanding of probability. We see Pat Buchanan cite that black males between 16 and 36 are only 3 percent of the population but commit 33 percent of crime and think: Oh my god! That’s 10 times more! No wonder we profile! If I see a black person on the street there’s a good chance they might try to murder me!

But we’re not thinking about what these numbers actually mean. If you bought 10 Mega Millions tickets instead of just 1, you were 10 times more likely to win! And your chance of winning was still ZERO.

So lets look at some crime numbers closer and think about what they ACTUALLY mean. First of all, according to 2010’s crime statistics, 22.2% of homicide victims were killed by people they’d never met. 22.2! That’s a lot higher than I would have thought, seeing as how I’m always hearing how much more likely you are to be killed by someone you know. But then I thought about what that means. There were 12,996 murder victims reported in America in 2010. If 22.2% of these victims were killed by a stranger, that would give us 2,859 random murders The US census reported a 2010 population of 308,745,538. That means that in 2010, as an American citizen you had a 0.0009% chance of being murdered by a stranger. Virtually ZERO.

Now let me ask you this: What sounds scarier? That you are virtually assured of not being murdered by a stranger in America, and you’re even more assured to not be murdered by a black stranger. Or that you are one thousand six hundred and thirty times more likely to be murdered by a stranger than win the lottery! I assume you’ll agree it’s the latter that sounds worse, but it doesn’t matter, because NEITHER ONE is going to happen to you.

More:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/gosak0