OT: More broadcast journalism

[Joel S. Berson]

At 5/1/2010 01:11 PM, Bill Palmer wrote:
>To respond to Joel's question, it seems to me to claim that the crime "rate"
>in  a small place is equal to the crime rate in a much more populous
>location deceptively implies that it is proportionately more dangerous.

True.  But I would not (did not) make that (deceptive) claim; I was
trying to understand why the reference to "total number" of
crimes.  It still seems to me that the "rate" per person is more
significant (if it has any significance at all) than the "total
number" of crimes.

>Sort
>of like saying that one of the disadvantages of American life is that half
>of the population has income which is below the median.
>
>Crime rate (I suppose) refers to crimes per unit population.  So if Arizona,
>with substantially fewer people than NYC had as much total crime, that would
>be noteworthy, but not that it had a similar rate of crime.
>
>However, it could just be that Dobbs, et al subscribe to the discredited
>conventional wisdom that New York's crime rate makes it extraordinarily
>dangerous.

That's what I think Dobbs believes.  He is mistaken, as Dave Wilton
pointed out.

Joel

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