international
tlambert | March 17, 1994R Bryner said:
Changing what is continuous data(numbers) to ranks to do an analysis on
them is throwing information away. Why is it done, I will tell you why,
someone did not like the information and decided to remove it. The funny
thing is it even has a legitimate sounding name.
Yeah, "non-parametric statistics". Why don't you at least try to
learn a tiny amount about it before you post nonsense again?
Brandon Ray writes:
Since you mention it, may I point out that non-parametric statistics are
rather weaker than parametric statistics? Since Pim (or the original author
of the study, if…
tlambert | March 14, 1994Pim van Meurs wrote:
Spearman Rank Correlations between % of households
owning guns and r value p value
________________________
Proportions of homicides with a gun 0.608 Homi writes:
You have not explained the significance of the "spearman rank correlation"
or how these numbers were arrived at. For all I know, they could've had 5
monkeys hitting a keyboard and entered these numbers. What is the
correlation coefficient and how did they arrive at this result? How did
they get a "P"…
tlambert | October 25, 1993Steve Kao said:
RKBA.016 - Is the United States the most violent nation?
Version 1.2 (last changed on 91/03/22 at 13:05:06)
In homicide, the US is number 11, with a murder rate of 9.60 per 100,000.
The nearest European country in the Netherlands, with a homicide rate of
7.15 per 100,000. However, elimination of high crime inner city rates
pushes the per capita down to 3.77, below such countries as Luxemburg
(5.25), Finland (4.88), West Germany (4.47), Scotland (3.82), and somewhat
barely above Sweden (3.36).
The source for those figures would appear to have been "Book of
World Rankings" by…
tlambert | September 26, 1993Look in "Experiences of Crime across the World" van Dijk, Mayhew
and Killias (1991). This reports the result of an international
victimisation survey in the US, Canada, Australia and 11 European
countries.
Danny Low said:
The last time I looked at an atlas, the world included places like
Mexico and other Latin American countries. The book has a rather
grandiose title "across the World" but seems to exclude most of
the world. Are the countries you listed the only ones in the
book? If it is so I would consider the sample to be very biased.
The only countries. They also surveyed Warsaw and…
tlambert | September 23, 1993Steve Kao said:
Perhaps someone from Switzerland can enlighten us. Are not all males
between the ages of 18 and 55 issued rifles?
No. All male Swiss citizens between 20 and 50 who are in the army are
issued rifles. Roughly 15% of Swiss residents are not citizens, and
20% of the citizens called up do not serve in the army. So, very
roughly, that's (50-20)/70x0.8x0.85 = 15% of the population.
I would guess that >90% of
the households in Switzerland have males between the ages of 18 and 55
in them, implying that >90% of the households have a gun in them.
In the Encyclopedia of the…
tlambert | September 22, 1993C. D. Tavares said:
Hey, Tim --- perhaps you can compare the ten largest US cities ---
the places where the vast majority of US violent crime occurs --- with
third world nations, and then enumerate for us the sociological factors
for which there is a tinker's damn worth of difference between the two.
If you want to claim that the ten largest US cities are similar to
third world nations then it is up to you to do the research.
If you want something easier, you could trying looking up some crime
figures and tell us what percentage of US violent crime occurs in the
ten largest cities. Bet you…
tlambert | September 20, 1993Nosy said:
Perhaps Lambert can explain why the US murder RATE in
which feet and/or fists were used as weapons is higher
than the Canadian or UK murder rate with the same
weapons.
Are feet and/or fists more "readily available" in
the United States than in Canada or the UK?
Why Nosy, didn't you know that weapon availability is not the sole
determinate of the homicide rate? Given that, why can't you come up a
international comparison to support your position involving first
world nations?
Switzerland does not have more gun
owners than the US (no matter whether you count total owners, percent…
tlambert | September 16, 1993Peter K. Boucher said:
We have higher homicide rates than many nations, but guns aren't
the cause of it. In any case, this kind of comparison can be
used by both sides (Mexico has stricter gun control and more
homicide, while Switzerland has more gun owners and less homicide),
but it remains IRRELEVANT.
Progunners have to reach into the third world and get their facts
wrong for their comparisons --- Switzerland does not have more gun
owners than the US (no matter whether you count total owners, percent
owners, or militia guns as `owned').
If you would like to argue that such
comparisons are…
tlambert | July 17, 1992If you want to consider population density, Alaska has a density 7
times that of Yukon. This is a rather enormous difference.
Andy Freeman said:
But, is it a significant one? The relative size of the empty spaces
probably doesn't matter much, except when it comes to computing
average population density, because we really can ignore places where
there's no one around to kill or be killed.
I think it is up to those who claim that the two places are
comparable, to show that, ignoring uninhabited areas, the densities
are the same.
Here is another way they differ:
% of population living in…
tlambert | July 12, 1992Andy Freeman said:
Since Alaska is significantly larger, that factor of 20 is not
particularly relevant.
If you want to consider population density, Alaska has a density 7
times that of Yukon. This is a rather enormous difference.
Furthermore, gun availability may well be HIGHER in the Yukon.
(Centerwall does not have any data on gun ownership in Alaska and Yukon.)
Legal availability is certainly lower in the Yukon than in Alaska.
It is? What evidence do you have?
tlambert | July 10, 1992Dean Payne said:
Centerwall made his comparisons with and without the major (pop. > 1M)
metropolitan areas. With these areas, I get the same numbers you list.
Without, I get 3.1 for Canadian provinces, and 3.7 for the US states.
I get the same numbers. Here are the homicide rates, inside and
outside major metropolitan areas.
homicide handgun % with
rate homicide rate handgun
Canada 2.8 0.3 11
<1M 3.1 0.2 6
1M 2.2 0.4 18
US 8.5…
tlambert | July 1, 1992(BTW: I find your claim that "the difference in the murder rates is
explained by the different racial fractions in each city" rather
strange, when Centerwall has shown that when household crowding is
controlled for, black and white domestic homicide rates in Atlanta are
the same.)
C. D. Tavares said:
Huh? 'Scuse me, which one is Atlanta in: Seattle, or Vancouver?
The situation in Seattle may be different from Atlanta (and the black
and white homicide rates in Vancouver do not differ significantly),
but that is not the only piece of evidence that socio-economic status
explains racial…
tlambert | June 29, 1992Andy Freeman said:
the murder rate is HIGHER in comparable regions of Canada than it is
in the US. See Centerwall's paper in the Dec 91 issue of the
American Journal of Epidemiology.
Seattle and Vancouver ARE apples and oranges. The difference in
murder rates is explained by the different racial fractions in each
city.
Could you tell us what definition of "comparable" you used where
Alaska and Yukon are "comparable" and Seattle and Vancouver are not?
Read the paper; it isn't my definition of "comparable".
I have read the paper. By the definition that Centerwall uses
(geographical…
tlambert | June 6, 1992The Terminator said:
Excluding the United States and Switzerland would make this worse.
Further, do you have any justification for excluding them?
Eliminating data points, simply because they don't "fit" isn't very
good methodology.
Because with least squares estimation, outlying values bias the
results. In this case they make the correlation higher, giving a
value that would be quoted by a politician, and not a statistician.
I made the same mistake on an oral presentation a semester ago.
I was computing a linear regression for data taken in the Millikan
Oil Drop Experiment. I "threw out"…
tlambert | June 2, 1992Henry E. Schaffer said:
In articles various people say things like:
By the way, values of 0.48 and 0.45 are REALLY BAD.
and then argue over whether these are or should be publishable, etc.
In summary --- AARRGH! A correlation, in itself, is neither good/bad
nor publishable/unpublishable. One needs to know the "significance
level" and/or such extra information such as the design/size of
the experiment/survey yielding the correlation. One also needs to
know what is being claimed for the correlation (in terms of explanatory
or descriptive power) as to get some insight into the reaction of a…
tlambert | May 26, 1992Rick Bressler said:
The Netherlands have a homicide rate about double that of the
English one, and only half as many guns.... So here we have The
Netherlands at about the lowest rate of gun ownership in Europe, and
the Swiss with one of the highest and the homicide rates are about
equal.
We really need to look at more data points....
I found ownership percentages for handguns in "Experiences of Crime across
the World" van Dijk, Mayhew and Killias (1991). These are from an
international victimization survey. (The survey asked about long guns too,
but the book does not report the answer.)…
tlambert | March 19, 1992Since guns are very rarely used to defend against rapists, and only a
small fraction of rapes are committed at gun point, and there is no
good evidence for any deterrent effect for guns preventing rape, I
doubt if gun control has a major effect on rape.
Eric Johnson said:
I assume you mean 'in Australia' for everything above...
Nope. In the US guns are used in self defence in about 0.5% of rapes.
(See my recent posting.)
The number of rapes committed at gunpoint is irrelevant in this case, since
men almost always can outpower women based on their physical strength.
She doesn't have to…
tlambert | January 21, 1992I decided to check the claim that crime went up following gun control
in England in 1920. I compared the homicide rates for England for the
period 1911-1920 with the period 1921-1930 and found that the rate
declined by 8%. This change could have been caused by demographic
changes that followed from World War I, since this killed a
significant number of young males (the group that murders most.)
To check for this, I looked at all the countries in [1] for which
homicide data was available covering 1911-1930. A feature common to
almost all these countries (Japan being the major exception) was…
tlambert | January 20, 1992It has been pointed out to me that the 1903 gun law in England was rather weak,
and that real gun control started in 1920, so I have added a line to
the table below.
Second and third columns are homicide rate per 100,000
Year England & Wales USA Ratio Source
1903 0.93 2.6 1/3 [1]
1920 0.84 7.1 1/8 [1]
1988 0.6 9.0 1/15 [2]
Over 85 years, there are lots of changes that that could affect
the homicide rate. Furthermore, the years 1903
and 1988 could be atypical and give a misleading picture. I made no
claim that this…
tlambert | November 27, 1991Larry Cipriani said:
Well, if we nuke New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and Detroit the
crime rates in the US will be incredibly low, lower than that of just about
every other nation on earth.
Not so. I have grouped together Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New
York, Philadelphia and Washington DC. (1998 figures)
Pop Homicid Robbery Motor Vehicle Theft
Big US Cities 17.7M 25.2 938 1587
Rest of US 228.1M 7.1 165 505
US Total 245.8M 8.4 221 583
For comparison, here is Australia, (grouping Sydney and Melbourne)
Syd+Mel 6.6M 2.0 85 1116
Rest of OZ 10.2M 2.…