Wednesday, December 07, 2005

I Left My Context In San Francisco

According to World Net Daily:
Recently released crime statistics show the homicide rate in California is 265 percent higher than the death rate suffered by U.S. and British military personnel in Iraq.

According to the report "Crime in California 2004," compiled by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, there were 2,394 reported homicides in the Golden State last year. That compares with 905 deaths of coalition forces in Iraq, chiefly Americans and Brits, during the same time period.
(via Mark Nicodemo)

9 comments:

VMC said...

You, and Farrah, must have left your math skills in San Francisco.

When you speak of things like death rates, you are speaking about ratios.

Percentages.

Here's the math.

We have approximately 144000 allied troops in Iraq. In one year, 905 of them are killed. That would be 905/145000 = .62%

There are 33,871,648 people in California. Out of these, 2394 are murdered during that same time period (2004). Here's that math: 2394/33871648= .007%

Now, we divide the greater result by the smaller, i.e., .62%/.007% and find that the death rate in Iraq is 88 times that of the murder rate of Californians.

Any questions?

@nooil4pacifists said...

True, VMC but I'm not arguing Iraq is safer than California (though at one point, Iraq was safer than DC). Rather, I'm observing that few obsess over the two-thousandth, or fifty thousandth death in America.

OBloodyHell said...

Hmmmm…. Does this mean the Dems now have to introduce a bill to “get Americans out of California – NOW!!!” ??

(:-9

OBloodyHell said...

> Now, we divide the greater result by the smaller, i.e., .62%/.007% and find that the death rate in Iraq is 88 times that of the murder rate of Californians.

Any questions?


*Yeah*:
How about South Central LA?

If you're gonna get nitpicky about conditions, let's at least make sure we're talking about ALL the conditions, not simply the ones that make your argument look good.

Feel free, if you want, to consider not just all of Iraq but the actual areas of notable insurrection, too. Why do I think that none of that would particularly help your case?

LOL.

OBloodyHell said...

BY THE WAY:

Yeah, this is an inaccurate comparison since sheer numbers are not really what matters but ratios…

BUUUUT --- that never seems to matter to Dems when they cite raw numbers with implied exclamation points after them and not the slightest semblance of context...

Does it?

"Hmmmm", indeed.

VMC said...

A suggestion to Nick:

1. Find out the population of South Central LA.
2. Find out how many murders there were in South Central LA during 2004.
3. Divide item 2 by item 1.
4. Report the result.

That would be how you would make your case, right?

VMC said...

Nick b: Feel free, if you want, to consider not just all of Iraq but the actual areas of notable insurrection, too. Why do I think that none of that would particularly help your case?

Why don't you illustrate this point with an example? Decrease your denominator by isolating your population to those stationed in areas of "notable insurrection". Next, take your number of deaths from those same areas, which are likely to be very high, otherwise they wouldn't be areas of notable insurrection, would they?

Now, what happens to a ratio when you lower the denominator while keeping the numerator high?

Does it get bigger or smaller?

If it gets bigger, how does that help your case?

NotClauswitz said...

South Central, Bayview Hunters Point, Richmond, and Oakland... but you can probably toss out Butte County and several others entirely.

Anonymous said...

And it also says something about the amount of handguns in the US today. To think that a combat zone would be less deadly than a civilian city in the US is telling.