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) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
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.
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
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:
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
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 | | ' `
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
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. Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com