Knife Culture

[Alan2]

No matter which way I look at this problem, the same little word keeps cropping up.... "BLACK" ... call me what you wish, I am only stating the facts

[admarlow]

HOW DARE YOU NOXLUMOS, call some one a racist without ANY reason to at all. Please point me to one comment I have made that will support this. Maybe you should change your name from NOXLUMOS to OBNOXIOUS

[WaldoMcFroog]

You can't argue with the facts, admarlow?

Oh really? So, you�ve never heard the phrases �lies, damned lies and statistics� then? Statistics are extremely useful things, but they have to be interpreted very carefully to ensure you are not making assumptions about what the data is telling you.

I have worked compiling and analysing statistics for a living, and there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that were I to claim the relationships you are apparently so desperate to have us accept, on the basis of the evidence you have found, I would have been sacked.

The statistics you have provided tell you only the fact that x many people of ethnic origin y have committed crime z. They do not permit you to make any further assumptions that all people of ethnic origin y have therefore committed crime z, or that all people of ethnic origin y have any greater disposition to commit crime z than those from any other ethnic group because the data is too one dimensional to support such claims. In fact, worse than that, the data you�ve used to support your contention actually states it is an aggregated figure for knife and gun crime, further undermining any credibility your claims might have; how many of those arrested for knife crime were black? You simply cannot say from those statistics.

Your contentions are meaningless and do not prove what you seem to think they prove. Far from knowing your subject, you've completely mangled several rules of statistical analysis to try and prove a point that not even the best stats analyst could infer from your data set.

[newtron]

OK admarlow, so you are just stating the numbers with no interpretation. That's fair enough, but you can't really discuss statistics without interpreting what they mean. Otherwise they are just meaningless numbers.

So how do you interpret those statistics? What do you think they mean?

[admarlow]

well my understanding of the figures is that I am more likley to be stabed by a black person than a white person and that its cant be down to poverty as there are at least as many poor white people as black (and of course not all black people are poor before anyone calls me a racist). I do not know the reason for this but I am interested in anyone who has any logical reasons apart from poverty.

[newtron]

So you don't think poverty plays any role what so ever?

[admarlow]

yes, but not as much as a lot of people quote, as poverty isnt a predoninantly black trait

[noxlumos]

Admarlow, just read your posts, the slantedness and subtext are clear for all to see. If you think black people are more likely to stab you, you have misread and misunderstood something fair enough, but then to vehemently try to inflict that wrong assumption onto the rest of us, is a statement of racial prejeudice, and I find you insufferably stupid by the way so why don't you change your name to thicko?

[admarlow]

ha ha I thought you wasn't going to post again!. Are we going to go around this again? OK find some information (not your own opinion) that I am wrong. Oh and make sure its from an impartial source maybe the police or something.

[newtron]

Well, I think what most people on this thread have been trying to say is that there is not just one simple logical reason for those statistics. Why do people behave the way they behave? Two sub-branches of science (psychology and sociology) are devoted to answering that question. I'm sure it is a combination of several factors, one of which might be a positive feedback mechanism where many people expect black people to behave in a certain way based on a stereotype. And after being expected to behave in a certain way for so long, many black people may actually fall into that stereotype, which then encouaages more people to believe that stereotype. And the viscious cycle goes on and on. Now I don't know how you treat black people, but just be careful. You might be part of the problem. Of course, I'm a hydrogeologist not a psychologist, so I have no idea.

[admarlow]

i agree with newtron (in part)