From a German persepctive:

Contrasting their nation's policy with that of the Americans, Germans point proudly to Article 102 of their Basic Law, adopted in 1949. It reads, simply: "The death penalty is abolished." They often say that this 56-year-old provision shows how thoroughly the postwar Federal Republic has learned -- and applied -- the lessons of Nazi state-sponsored killing as though having the death penalty for murderers was the sole cause of Hitler's rise to power and the genocide that followed. (Communist East Germany kept the death penalty until 1987.)

But the actual history of the German death penalty ban casts this claim in a different light. Article 102 was in fact the brainchild of a right-wing politician who sympathized with convicted Nazi war criminals -- and sought to prevent their execution by British and American occupation authorities. Far from intending to repudiate the barbarism of Hitler, the author of Article 102 wanted to make a statement about the supposed excesses of Allied victors' justice.

Ugh, irrelevant and pretty low.:down: I hope you're not saying people who oppose the death penalty are Nazis?

It is not my subjective opinion on death penalty, but it is your subjective (mis?)understabding what a correlation is. And a correlation is no causal connection. You will not find a single statistics book in the world saying that. It has nothing to do wether I am an expert in crime rate, or you, or we both not. It is about most elemental statistics, most basic ground of it. Or better: the violation of rules set on this most basic level. Your graph does say nothing about a causal context. Talk what you want, it remains that, for solid fact, hard, scientific/statistical reasons.

That'S why your conclusions often also is objected. If the data really were so solid as you think by looking at that picture, it would be much harder for critics to do so.

Okay, either you know about the basics of statistics, or you don't. I myself am not intersted too much into that or the theme at hand to endlessly wanting to give you a private seminary in it :D Just grab a book. Painfully thick and in-depth statistic books are around by the dozens, if not hundreds. You simply misunderstood what a correlation is, and what it means. A correlation is no causal connection. Two graphs that are given without further data and statistical processing are no causal connection (never, btw.).

If such a thing is done with regard to global warming, describing temperature, and some emission output, critics and economists who want to leave things as they are immediately would start yelling and say: those graphs mean nothing, they mean no causal connection - that still has to be prooven. In fact the whole debate about wether there is manmade warming or not often is based on this - and in principal such critics are right. It needs indeed different statistical tools and reasearch data to prove a causal connection. A correlation prooves nothing.

If you want to check if a high correlation means a causal connection between two variables, depending on the overall desoign and data type and number of variables you need to do things like variance analysis, F-tests or discrimination analysis, and if you find that there are indermediating variables having an influence (resulting in more than just two or three variables), you even need to do factor analysis. Only these allow you to assess if the ammount of interaction between two variables allow to conclude on a causal connection, or if it is just random variance. Both outcomes are imaginable, even with high correlations.

Ordinary audience does not think about these things and may not know aboiut the background, that'S why politics and market managers love these simplified graphs to manipulate the public into the direction they want them to move. It looks convincing, nevertheless in that state is close to meaningless. Ii is nonsens, and illogical. You even do not need statistics to see that the interpretation of those graphs in the way it is intended is simply illogical. Because they only give you two values, and nothing else.

The latter out-of-area comment about Nazis I take as a hint that you are pretty desperate now.:lol: The issue described there has nothing to do with correlations and misinterpreting graphs.

And here: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/arti...id=167#STUDIES
as I have indicated in a previous posting, there is opposing statistics, too. ski8mming over the data that are available on this site, I found at firts glance far too many exceptions from the trend in subman'S graphs as that one could argue there is a connection between number of executions, and cases of murder. Often it is that states with death penalty that have higher crime rates, while states with no death penalty saw slightly falling crime rates.
This does not say it is this or that way. It just illustrates that a single graph says nothing without further elaboration and researching additonal background data and information.

And just to provoke some imagination:


http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterbrut.gif

Marvellous what one can do with just a mean value of two variables, undocumented! :smug:

Nope - just that this guy had that passed so that his friends wouldn't be executed.

Two things -

A - it was not my opinion that we were analyzing, but that of our very own criminal justice system who is the one that made that graph to analyze the data.

B - You graph is looking at something else - percentage of increase - and if you look at the graph of mine, the increase is pretty stagnent across the years, which is reflected in your graph. What your graph leaves out is the reduction that it would show if it continued on with 'current execution years' in which executions were resumed - and at that point it would show and even further reduction! See - yours is leaving out have the data and that is the problem. So yours is what I would call manipulated data and only shows 2 very 'narrow' things and mine is straight data shown year by year.

Now the big thing - yours is showing based on a percentage - something that naturally decreases with population increase. That is why correct information uses a 'per capita' basis if you are looking for correlations. I'd love to see your graph on a 1991 to 2004 basis - it would be a very small percentage!

So you were saying?

-S

One more thought since increases vs decreases are trivial in comparrison to the crime that would warrant such a thing as an execution. It is the nature of the crime that needs to be dealt with, and I can't say it any better than this:

Edward Koch:
It is by exacting the highest penalty for the taking of human life that we affirm the highest value of human life.

Mike Royko:
When I think of the thousands of inhabitants of Death Rows in the hundreds of prisons in this country...My reaction is: What's taking us so long? Let's get that electrical current flowing. Drop those pellets [of poison gas] now! Whenever I argue this with friends who have opposite views, they say that I don't have enough regard for the most marvelous of miracles - human life. Just the opposite: It's because I have so much regard for human life that I favor capital punishment. Murder is the most terrible crime there is. Anything less than the death penalty is an insult to the victim and society. It says..that we don't value the victim's life enough to punish the killer fully.

The graph doesn't become better just because it is your official bureaus misusing statistic methods. the author is not important. The method he chooses is.

I also explained while by all reasons of formal logic, and by all understanding of human behavior modern psychology and behaviourism can offer, the term "death penalty" is a contradiction in itself. It is no penalty. Mr. Ryoko and Mr. Koch, it seems two hardcore enthusiasts for death penalty so their opinion may not be a surprise, do not change a thing in that with their statements you quote. So why should I care for them.

Anyway, it's talking to a wall with the word Subman on it, :lol: and I already said and repeated several times what there is to be said. Either you have understood the problems by now, or not. No matter what: have more fun with visiting the screenshot thread in the tank-forum now! ;) http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=97188

You still fail to recognize that your graph is narrow in focused. One thing about being a proper researcher is getting your sources from valid and respected scientific places - ones that are experts in their given field. That is where mine comes from - the very source that knows how to analyze and interpret this kind of data and probably the highest source possible.

Yours however is easy to pick apart. So, you can continue to bury your head in the sand if you feel like. The data is there - mine is not narrow or focused.

-S

:-? This may sound hard but

In some cases about murders , Child raper/molesters etc etc

then i,m like ''Shoot the f*cker in the head and lets get on with our lives'':stare:

Well put. Instead we sit around cooing and ahhing over something that resembles a pile of crap.

-S

You have illustrated by now that you are not qualified to judge that. When you even do not know how to interpret a correlation, you shouldn't lecture others on research and statistical methods - it is ridiculous. What source that graohic is coming from is unimportant. That they made a methodical mistake in giving the data in this manner, vulnerable to interpret it as a causality (like you do, else you wouldn't have quoted that data) is the thing to remark. That is no subjctive opinion of me. That is hard solid statistical scientific fact.

It is not only about this example. Giving correlating data in a manner like in that graph is methodically wrong. Always. In every case. Since the wide population usually does not know even the basics of statistics, it is done nevertheless, to score an easy victory in turning opinions in this or that direction on the basis of oh so "hard" fact and data. But it is messed up.

The data in your graph also is not split up per state, what is needed, since you have different legislative rules in the various US states, not all of them practice d.p. So, the graph shows mean values, generalizations that again need additonal statistical indices like this absolute minimum: variance and mean variation, in order to make any minimal reasonable interpretation. And that is only the minimum standard. There are more descriptive categories to illustrate the validity of a mean value.

Concerning "my" graphic, you obviously missed the hidden irony when I wrote: "Marvellous what one can do with just a mean value of two variables, undocumented! :smug:" Instead of feeding a dead cat, you better look at the number counts that are also available on the site. Shows you that the number of murderings is constant or slightly falling in states that do not have death penalty, sometimes is even on a lower level than in states that do have d.p., while the crime rate remains high or sometimes falls sometimes climbs in states with d.p. and other contradictions. That'S why it is som often said that the statistical findings do not support the theory of a causlity between death penalty, and crime rate. The data usually is far too diverse, and partially contradictory. Not only on that site, but I do not care to search old archives and books just to illustrate that.

On the obviously logical contradiction of the term death penalty itself, and if it does not serve modern societies's understanding of penalty and justice: why it then still is used, you obviously have nothing to say.

Unlike you, I gave you an explanation for your messed up graph - population expansion. Your graph will always be lower as time moves on and population increases.

Mine is not capable of alternating based on this outside force since it is based per 100,000 people or per capita - something that is only really modified by lower than 100,000 people. That is why it is used as the most accurate statistic.

Your idea do not hold water as far as I can see. If someone kills you today, it is an insult not to exact an equal punishment on your killer.

J.J. Rousseau - The Social Contract written in 1762:

• Again, every rogue who criminously attacks social rights becomes, by his wrong, a rebel and a traitor to his fatherland. By contravening its laws, he ceases to be one of its citizens: he even wages war against it. In such circumstances, the State and he cannot both be saved: one or the other must perish. In killing the criminal, we destroy not so much a citizen as an enemy. The trial and judgements are proofs that he has broken the Social Contract, and so is no longer a member of the State.

-S

PS. The state by state thing would not effect much of anything, since almost all states execute, just some do more than others.

What kind of knowledge about statistical methodology and data interpretation and empirical analysis do you call your own? I mean, what is your qualification?

Surprise!

And bump. :D

The killer quote: "The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer."

:/\\chop

for me the sole idea of a possible mistake is enough to abolish the death penalty, the idea of an innocent being put on death row someday is simply not acceptable.
François Mitterand did a great thing when he abolished it in France in 1981