Statistics

Observational Bias in Mass-Shooting Stories

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Why do we spend so much money on fire proofing buildings when we seem to have so few major fires? 

Via Instapundit comes this news story of an armed college student preventing a mass killing. I think the most interesting facet of the story is where it was reported. This story of a lawful citizen killing a home invader and preventing a mass killing didn’t appear in the New York Times, just the website of a local TV station. 

On the other hand, had the criminals carried out their apparent plan to murder the 10 victims in the apartment, does anyone doubt that such a horrible crime would have made nationwide news in every form of media? Does anyone doubt that a blizzard of opinion pieces would claim the murders as evidence of the need to disarm the citizenry?  

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Flu and Mortality

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I am far from an expert on medicine but was interested in the difference in mortality in Mexico and the United States on this latest outbreak of swine flu. After reading many of the accounts I noted that many of the individuals in Mexico did not have access to health care and / or delayed going to the doctor and used home remedies or self-medicated until their situation was very bad.

The victims seem to be dying of what is basically pneumonia. Pneumonia is a serious condition, and if left untreated (or not treated until far into its course) it can be deadly, even here in the US. I know several individuals who have gotten some form of pneumonia (or their children) in recent months here in Chicago – and while they missed work and obviously had high concern for any youngsters with the symptoms, they all were treated and came back fine after being ill or out of work for a while.

What you likely are seeing in the difference in mortality is the difference between a broadly based, functioning health care system from a rich society and one for a semi-functioning health care system for a poorer society. Mexico is a pretty developed country – if this sort of flu broke out in Africa it probably wouldn’t even be noticed among the endemic diseases and preventable fatalities that happen every day, sadly enough. As I note in a recent post about Angola, one of the richer African countries (they have oil revenues), a significant portion of their total health care budget goes to sending the richest friends and family of their leader off for foreign doctors overseas, to show where their priorities lie.

The media won’t come out and say it directly because it may be perceived as offensive to Mexican sensibilities but the mortality rate seems to be almost solely due to the differences in the effectiveness of our overall health care systems.

Delayed Vindication

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Shannon Love was taken to task by the anti-war left way back in 2004. The reason why he drew their ire was because he dared to question the wisdom of a suspicious study that appeared in the Lancet. The study claimed that about 100,000 civilians died in Iraq during the first year after US forces invaded.

Why was this suspicious? Mainly because the authors of the study laid the blame for the deaths at the feet of the Coalition, the number of deaths were ten times higher than any other credible estimate, and because it was released just in time to effect the 2004 US elections.

(If you are interested in the back and forth, this post is a roundup of all essays discussing the study.)

Strategypage reports that the Iraq government has just released the findings of a study of their own.

“The government has released data showing that 110,000 Iraqis have died, mostly from sectarian and terrorist violence, since 2003.”

So the 100K figure is finally correct, only five years after it was first reported. And the Coalition forces didn’t cause the majority of the deaths but terrorists, criminals, and blood feuds are to blame.

Does this matter now, five years after the fact?

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This Debate Would Be Over If the Other Side was Rational

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One of the tactics used by those who advocate banning privately owned firearms is that Great Britain enjoys a lower level of homicide than that found in the United States. The idea is that we could have lower murder rates, if only guns were banned.

Part of their argument is true. The US has a homicide rate about 2.5 times that of the UK.

Kevin of The Smallest Minority discusses out some painful truths about this assertion. He points out that the US homicide rate used to be much greater, but has fallen even though more states have passed laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed firearms. At the same time, the rates of all violent crimes, and all crimes in general, have been climbing in the UK even though they have been passing ever more laws restricting legal self defense.

Seems simple enough. They restrict weapons in the UK, and crime goes up. We allow more people to carry firearms here in the US, and crime goes down. Even if there are other reasons which affected this outcome (and there are), the very idea that banning guns will lead to less crime has been completely discredited. Right?

I wish!

Money (Basket) Ball

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Michael Lewis is a great journalist and author of several books that are highly recommended by Dan and I. “Moneyball” tells the story of the Oakland A’s, and how they used statistics and a novel view of baseball to win a lot of games on a small budget, as well as the story of Billy Beane, who went from a can’t miss, 4 tool prospect to an MLB bust, and then on to revolutionize baseball as manager of the A’s. “The Blind Side” explained the evolution of the left tackle in the NFL from an also-ran to one of the most important positions on the field, along with a lucid an excellent description of the evolution of passing offense, which sadly enough has apparently never been read by our beloved Chicago Bears. The book also featured Michael Oher, who was plucked from total obscurity to starting on Ole Miss, the only team that knocked off eventual NCAA champion Florida last season. For non-sports related items, Michael Lewis also wrote the famous book “Liars Poker” which explained the rise of bond trading at Salomon Brothers and is a Wall Street classic.

Recently Michael Lewis wrote an article on basketball that appeared in the NY Times magazine – to find the article go to the NY Times site and type in the title of the article in the search engine – “The No-Stats All-Star”.

In this article, Michael Lewis takes on basketball the same way he took on baseball and football, above. He is attempting to do what the best journalists do – tie in the “human element” with an original analysis of a complex topic. The key to Michael Lewis’ writing is that his human element actually matters and isn’t just fluff to glue the story together.

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