Counterproductive self-defence

Skybird · 10-05-09, 09:32 AM

Maybe I should explain what they did, people not familiar with academic slang may not get the right picture form the short summary that is available to us.

What they did is they took the crime cases of a given area (Philadelphia) in a given period of time (2003-2006), separated them in two groups (attacker vs unarmed and attackervs armed victims), and looked in what group more people got shot at. Well, that is not precisely what they did, but their approach acchieves an effect that could be described like this. They found that in the group with the armed people, 4.4 times as many of these armed people got shot at and got wounded/killed, than in the other group (again, I try to "translate" what they actually did into what was the inention for doing it). The summary also indicates that the finding is statistically significant (means it is not caused by random chance, but there is a real significant difference between the two different rresults for both groups. That is no surprise, becasue in established scientific magazaine you do not get conclusions or results published if they fail the significance criterion as long as there is no infomrational value to be gained from understanding that a given hypothesis could not have been supported in a given experimental setup. but usually publication of data in established science magazine depends on that a significant difference between two or more groups is being found instead of being rejected.

They did no experiments. They ran no observation setups in "wild life out there".

They did a statistical analysis of data from the official crime records.

I aSSUME THEY GOT THE MATERIAL DIRECTLY FROM EITHER THE POlice or the city administration.

What was it that Neal said recently about the curse of CAPS LOCK?

10-05-09, 09:32 AM	#8
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 42,742 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	Maybe I should explain what they did, people not familiar with academic slang may not get the right picture form the short summary that is available to us. What they did is they took the crime cases of a given area (Philadelphia) in a given period of time (2003-2006), separated them in two groups (attacker vs unarmed and attackervs armed victims), and looked in what group more people got shot at. Well, that is not precisely what they did, but their approach acchieves an effect that could be described like this. They found that in the group with the armed people, 4.4 times as many of these armed people got shot at and got wounded/killed, than in the other group (again, I try to "translate" what they actually did into what was the inention for doing it). The summary also indicates that the finding is statistically significant (means it is not caused by random chance, but there is a real significant difference between the two different rresults for both groups. That is no surprise, becasue in established scientific magazaine you do not get conclusions or results published if they fail the significance criterion as long as there is no infomrational value to be gained from understanding that a given hypothesis could not have been supported in a given experimental setup. but usually publication of data in established science magazine depends on that a significant difference between two or more groups is being found instead of being rejected. They did no experiments. They ran no observation setups in "wild life out there". They did a statistical analysis of data from the official crime records. I aSSUME THEY GOT THE MATERIAL DIRECTLY FROM EITHER THE POlice or the city administration. What was it that Neal said recently about the curse of CAPS LOCK? __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert. Last edited by Skybird; 10-05-09 at 10:52 AM.

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