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Murder in Canada - Off Topic

David Yee

David Yee

June 8, 2006, 12:07 a.m. (Message 45459)

Do you read the quotations under Anselm's postings?  The latest was:


That's like comparing the total number of murders in the Vatican in 1998 (3)
with those in Canada (about 183,000), and concluding that Canada is 61,000
times as dangerous a place.
          -- Rick Moen, on comparing Windows and Linux "security patch counts"


In  defence of Canada, the number of murders in Canada in 2003 was
548, or 1.73 per 100,000 of population.  The numbers for 1998 would be
similar.


Regards,

David (Toronto)


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GOSS9@telefonica.net

GOSS9@telefonica.net

June 8, 2006, 7:30 a.m. (Message 45461, in reply to message 45459)

Apples and oranges thing. What you are doing with your murder numbers 
is comparing an entire country with one Roman neighborhood. Try all of 
Canada with all of Rome including the Vatican and see what you get. I 
know, the Vatican is an independent State, de jure, but de facto it is 
just a part of Rome with it comes to this sort of stat.
Anselm Lingnau

Anselm Lingnau

June 8, 2006, 1:38 p.m. (Message 45462, in reply to message 45459)

David Yee wrote:

> In  defence of Canada, the number of murders in Canada in 2003 was 548, or
> 1.73 per 100,000 of population.  The numbers for 1998 would be similar.

The original number does seem rather high, but that's not really the point 
(even with 548 murders, Canada is not 182 times as dangerous as the Vatican).

The context of Rick Moen's quote comes from the practice of counting the 
various security advisories regarding Microsoft Windows on the one hand and 
Linux on the other hand. This is essentially comparing apples to oranges; the 
details are too non-SCD to go into here, but the comparison remains as 
ridiculous as it was even with the lower numbers.

Anselm
-- 
Anselm Lingnau, Frankfurt, Germany ..................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
Then I realized that I had spelled `-' wrong.      -- John Whitmore learns APL
Volleyballjerry

Volleyballjerry

June 8, 2006, 4:32 p.m. (Message 45463, in reply to message 45459)

And even comparing Canada with all of Rome is apples and oranges as well, one 
a nation of vast area with vast sparsely populated rural expanses, the other 
a densely populated city.  (Apologies for bothering to state the obvious!)

Robb Quint
Thousand Oaks, CA, USA

In a message dated 06/07/2006 10:34:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx writes:
Anselm Lingnau

Anselm Lingnau

June 8, 2006, 4:46 p.m. (Message 45465, in reply to message 45463)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx wrote:

> And even comparing Canada with all of Rome is apples and oranges as well,
> one a nation of vast area with vast sparsely populated rural expanses, the
> other a densely populated city.  (Apologies for bothering to state the
> obvious!)

It makes about as much sense as comparing the security bug counts of an 
operating system distribution (Microsoft Windows) with that of a complete 
system environment including not just the base operating system but various 
end-user applications, programming environments, network clients and 
services, etc. (Linux), i.e., none whatsoever. 

Which was the point of the original quotation.

Anselm
-- 
Anselm Lingnau, Frankfurt, Germany ..................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
[Oratory is] the art of making deep sounds from the stomach sound like
important messages from the brain.                        -- Winston Churchill
John Chambers

John Chambers

June 8, 2006, 6:46 p.m. (Message 45469, in reply to message 45459)

Anselm wrote:
| David Yee wrote:
| > In  defence of Canada, the number of murders in Canada in 2003 was 548, or
| > 1.73 per 100,000 of population.  The numbers for 1998 would be similar.
|
| The original number does seem rather high, but that's not really the point
| (even with 548 murders, Canada is not 182 times as dangerous as the Vatican).
|
| The context of Rick Moen's quote comes from the practice of counting the
| various security advisories regarding Microsoft Windows on the one hand and
| Linux on the other hand. This is essentially comparing apples to oranges; the
| details are too non-SCD to go into here, but the comparison remains as
| ridiculous as it was even with the lower numbers.

Actually, the statistical reporting for computer  problems  is  worse
than  this.  It's common to count bug reports and security advisories
for every distribution of linux.  Since there are more than a hundred
distribution  (some  very  specialized),  this radically inflates the
figures.

To compare with the murder statistics, it's as if one were  to  count
the  murder  reports  from  all  publications  in  the Vatican and in
Canada.  So a murder reported by 30 Canadian newspapers and  radio/tv
stations  would  be  counted  30  times.  This way, 548 murders could
easily become 150,000 "murder reports".

Such a number would not necessarily be wrong.  If you  were  studying
the  media's  reporting  of  incidents,  you  would want to count the
reports.  But it's all too easy  for  politicians  and  marketers  to
describe  such  numbers  in  a  way  that  confuses  "incidents" with
"incident reports".  The linux crowd is very familiar with this  sort
of misleading PR.

In particular, consider the phrase "reported incidents".   Does  this
count  the  incidents  or  the reports?  Most readers will assume the
former, but it often means the latter.

I wonder if we could find a similar way to inflate the amount of  SCD
in  an area?  Can we find a way to pphrase the numbers so that people
think we're counting the dance events, but  we're  actually  counting
the  individual dances done at each event?  Even better, can we count
the dancers on the floor for each individual dance,  and  report  the
total  such  a  way that readers think we're counting the SCD events?
I'd bet that a good PR person could manage this ...

;-)

--
   _,
   O   John Chambers
 <:#/> <xx@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx>
   +   <xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx>
  /#\  in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, Earth
  | |
  ' `
Pia Walker

Pia Walker

June 8, 2006, 6:52 p.m. (Message 45470, in reply to message 45469)

Well if we don't get on topic soon, there will be one more murder somewhere
:>)

Pia
Adam Hughes

Adam Hughes

June 11, 2006, 12:42 p.m. (Message 45507, in reply to message 45469)

John Chambers <xx@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx> wrote:
> I wonder if we could find a similar way to inflate the amount of  SCD
> in  an area?  Can we find a way to pphrase the numbers so that people
> think we're counting the dance events, but  we're  actually  counting
> the  individual dances done at each event?  Even better, can we count
> the dancers on the floor for each individual dance,  and  report  the
> total  such  a  way that readers think we're counting the SCD events?
> I'd bet that a good PR person could manage this ...

I'm no PR person, but how about:

"Come and dance at Anglesey Abbey this afternoon.  Scottish Country
Dancing is so popular here right now, that in this area alone, you can
choose from 17 dances, and that's just today."

The full program of 17 dances is on our website...

It is quite easy to conflate "dance event" and "dance sequence".  You
are right, it is harder to make "dancer" mean "dance event"

Adam
Cambridge, UK.


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