QandO
Questions and Observations| « Book Review: "Miles Gone By' | Main | The real story of 527s » |
|
September 16, 2004 Statistics and nincompoops Sometimes you come across "reasoning" which makes you realize that if this was representative of main stream thinking, you'd have to conclude the human race doesn't have a chance of survival. Some professor of statistics wrote a piece for the LA Times (I found it in the San Jose Mercury) in which he says ... well let him say it: The bottom line is this: There will always be terrorists and legitimate efforts to catch and kill them. But meanwhile, the bigger statistical threat comes from the driver next to you who is talking on the cell phone. Did you catch the premise? This "terrorism" thing is all about the threat to you, and if you're worried about that, its hardly that much of a real threat when compared to bad drivers. Statistically speaking. He writes a whole piece describing how we're overreacting to this terrorist thing and giving away liberties by the handful when, in fact, it only averages about a 1000 or so souls a year. OK, true enough. I stand a much greater chance of being killed by another driver than by a terrorist. But on reflection, that's not the point of all of this, is it? I don't think anyone really believes that its all about the threat only to them. Its about much more than that. For instance, everyone of the 40,000 deaths on the highway this year will not change the direction of an election, such as 200 deaths in Spain did. Even twice the numbers of deaths on the highway would not have the horrible negative effect on a nation's economy as did 3,000 on September 11, 2001. While the loss of life is negligable in comparision, the impact of terrorism is far, far more damaging to the nation as a whole. I look both ways before crossing a street or pulling out into one, but not one of the drivers out there is a threat to me when I step into a government building or any other crowded public facility, unless that driver has made his car into a bomb. Certainly all of what Bart Kosko says in his article is technically true, its also irrelevant. Terrorism isn't just about the threat to me. Its about the threat to the very fabric of the nation I live in. Its a concerted effort by a brutal and fanatic enemy to change my way of life, change the direction of my country and effect the very lifeblood of my nation ... its economy. Not one of the millions of bad drivers out there can or will have that effect. So when you hear an idiot savant like this guy tell you that statistically speaking your neighbor in her car is more of a threat than Osamma bin Laden, pat him on the head, send him off to his ivory tower and call ahead to clear the road so he won't take out some innocent driver as he heads that way. |
I also noted the obligitory slap at Cell Phones and drivers.
Posted by: Bithead at September 16, 2004 11:55 AM
I spent a few years architecting a telematics platform for Ford Research in Dearborn. Ford Research was concerned about driver distraction in the platform and commissioned a study on risk factors.
What they found was that adjusting the radio and inserting CDs was 4 times more likely to cause an accident thatn cell phones.
So why are radios banned? ;)
Posted by: capt joe at September 16, 2004 12:13 PM
I wonder if this guy can fathom the meaning behind the question -
"do you walk to school or carry your lunch?"
Posted by: looker at September 16, 2004 12:17 PM
Ceteras Paribus and the Lavendar Cushions
McQ comments on Professor Bart Kosko's article for the LA Times. I have a similar reaction. Here's Prof. Kosko's quote.
The bottom line is this: There will always be terrorists and legitimate efforts to catch and kill them. But meanwhile, the bigger statistical threat comes from the driver next to you who is talking on the cell phone.
Prof. Kosko is a smart man. I own a book by him that I am
impressed with. But, even he can fool himself at times.
The reason his comment is clueless is because of his hidden
assumption -- the one that a concerned statistician will always
spell out for you: "other things being equal." It comes from the
Latin: "ceteras paribus". You may notice the first word's
similarity to "et cetera": "and other things".
Prof. Kosko's statement is false, except in fantasy land. And
the reason is simple: the driver next to you isn't trying to
destroy you, your nation, and your way of life.
It is easy to recall all the experts saying that the recession
which started in Clinton's final Fall in office was seriously
deepened by the 9/11 attack. And it is equally easy to point out
why. After 9/11, Congress voted billions of taxpayer dollars to
help shore up the airline industry. Insurance companies payed
out billions to individuals and building owners. Some companies
went out of business. Their suppliers had to cut back as well.
The ripple effect of the cutbacks travelled throughout our nation
and even beyond our shores.
Next, as Prof. Kosko would have it, we foolishly wasted time and
a lot of money beefing up security, and then liberating
Afghanistan and Iraq. And don't forget the longer airport waits.
Time is money and these longer waits represent lost economic
productivity for all the business travellers on which the
airlines depend for livelihood.
So, for Prof. Kosko, we just wasted a few hundred billion
dollars. A whole lot of taxpayer money and people's time spent
on something for which "the bigger statistical threat comes from
the driver next to you." For him, we didn't need to do it. And
we don't need to worry about it now.
Prof. Kosko is right, other things being equal. But they are not
equal. The driver next to you isn't trying to kill you. If he
fails to kill you and survives, he won't redouble his efforts
next time. If he succeeds in killing you (even though he doesn't
take a few thousand innocent people and a billion dollar building
with you), his friends won't be encouraged to kill the rest of
your family on the freeway.
More revealingly, Prof. Kosko's argument applies equally well to
freeway drivers (40-50,000 people killed annually) and to
homicides (14-18,000 annually). Therefore, we can paraphase him:
The bottom line is this: There will always be killers and legitimate efforts to catch them. But meanwhile, the bigger statistical threat comes from the driver next to you who is talking on the cell phone.
So, what's all this about people being concerned to beef up their
police force to stop homicides? Unfortunately for Prof. Kosko,
the answer is obvious.
The real bottom line, the thing that is emphatically not equal in
Prof. Kosko's simple academic world, is that the terrorist is out
to destroy our way of life. So, in the final analysis,
Prof. Kosko is very carefully right -- the deck chairs would look
better with lavendar cushions on his Titanic,
other things being equal.
--------
cps 040916.
Posted by: Chuck Siska at September 16, 2004 01:24 PM
Bart Kosko was a leading proponent of Fuzzy Logic, having studied with Lofti Zadeh, and probably still is although I haven't followed that field lately.
Let me slur him by saying he is following the worse sort of "fuzzy logic" by his reasoning.
Posted by: capt joe at September 16, 2004 02:08 PM
And also...even though he may be technically correct about the threat of drivers with cell phones versus terrorists...
the terror attacks, as some one alluded, also adversely impact economic activity. Much more than traffic fatalities, I'd imagine. 9-11 made the recession worse, not only because of government expenditures, but because of the impacts on business, tourism, etc...
there is something of a reverse multiplier that goes along with terror attacks that he does not account for.
besides all that, it is a typical wad of ivory tower liberal bullshit.
Posted by: Mr. K at September 16, 2004 03:56 PM
Chuck mostly covered this already, but the main flaw behind this reasoning (I've thought along the same lines a few times) is that he is not considering potential harm. The terrorists so far have not been as lethal as drivers, and lots of other things (cancer, poor water supplies in 3rd world countries, etc, etc, etc). However, most of the other things, if the status quo were maintained, will not suddenly start killing lots more people than it currently does. Terrorism, on the other hand, may start killing lots of people. So (when looking at things from purely a numbers perspective, not human perspective) I view the war on terror as a measure to prevent terrorism from becoming more statistically significant than it currently is.
Posted by: Clark Taylor at September 16, 2004 04:14 PM
The other point is the time sequence involved in the loss of life - a cell phoning driver doesn't wipe out 3000 people with one poorly executed left turn.
Incremental casualties are easier to bear from many angles.
Posted by: looker at September 16, 2004 04:35 PM
Deaths from accidents represent an inevitable part of life. If we have a transportation, system some people will die using it. If we give life saving medicines, some people will die from side effects.
Conscious, deliberate acts of murder are wholly avoidable. Terrorist are not acts of nature we should just shrug off. The good professor needs to crawl down from his ivory tower once and a while.
Posted by: Shannon Love at September 16, 2004 08:49 PM
Another thing missed is that traffic accidents are actually going down while the intensity and fatalities caused by terrorists against Americans was going up.
So your individual chances of being killed by a terrorist were steadily increasing. Something had to be done.
Posted by: Syl at September 17, 2004 06:31 AM
All he's saying is that you are at greater risk from other drivers on the road than you are from a direct terrorist attack. If you work at a government building, I'm sure it's slightly different (but still statistically insignificant). I don't worry about a terrorist attack, and I live in Las Vegas--one of the listed targets of al-Qaeda! I'm in a city of 2 million people, I work near the busiest part of town, and I still am probably more likely to die falling down the stairs than I am from being killed in a terrorist bombing.
Look, it's all about prioritizing what the greater danger is to you in your day-to-day life. You're also more likely to get hit by lightning 3 times than getting killed by a terrorist! (And lightning never strikes twice, they say!) Don't let the news create an irrational fear inside of you.
I'm not denying that terrorists exist and that they do in fact kill innocent people. I'm sorry for every family who loses a loved one due to the actions these cowardly people. But I am not afraid for myself, my friends, and my family because even in the post-9/11 era the chances of being killed by a terrorist are still the same as they were pre-9/11.
Posted by: Nutflush at October 7, 2004 11:19 PM