Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Question 57520, for reference.

It seems odd to me that someone would stand behind such a blatant distortion of statistics. For those of you who don't want to read the article (and I recommend you do, as it is very insightful into the nature of local politics) I'll summarize. Essentially, Carl Wimmer is regurgitating a statistic originally cited by Chris Herrod (both Utah state legislators) which suggests that Hispanics are responsible for 81% of all homicides in Salt Lake City. How did he get this statistic? The BCI (Bureau of Criminal Identification) released statistics from the 2008 homicide arrests in Salt Lake City. The statistics were that of 18 homicide arrests, nine were of Hispanics, two were of non-Hispanics, and 7 were of individuals of "unknown ethnicity". These stats, already questionable to begin with, were further distorted by throwing out the 7 for whom ethnicity was cited as "unknown". Hence, 9 out of 11 becomes "81%".

Let's play the "how many flaws can we find with his method?" game.

1. 11 isn't really a statistically significant number. We're talking about a city of close to a million residents, and we want to find a trend based on 11 events?
2. This number isn't really relevant to a discussion about illegal immigration, since it says nothing about the individuals' legal status. The only argument that could be made based on these flawed numbers is to say that Hispanics are committing crimes, and we should kick them out. But even these men aren't out of touch enough to think that could possibly fly.
3. We threw out half of the significant data we had to begin with, which was already scant. The only conclusion we can come to when 7/18 aren't reported is that the data is worthless, and to throw it out. That's what any good statistician would do.
4. Homicide is one crime which is very statistically insignificant when it comes to overall crime rate, in this case. That is to say, homicides represent a very small amount of total crimes committed, statistically speaking. It is a specious argument to use stats from a relatively rare event and claim it signifies broader trends in all crime rates. Incidentally, the Sutherland institute, known for its care in its statistic tracking (unlike our representatives here) gave a much more useful indication of crime rates, namely, what percent of prison inmates are undocumented immigrants. They came up with around 5%, which is what many sources put as the percentage of undocumenteds of the population at large.

That's what I've got so far. Let's see if anyone can come up with more.

It saddens me that individuals will still go to such great lengths to vilify individuals based on their race. Perhaps what saddens me more is that there are individuals who will listen to them and use their votes to drive politics in that same direction, siting faulty statistics such as these in their bigotry.

This is just a spin-off of #2, but it bothers me how when people think "illegal immigrant" they think "Mexican." Sure, stereotypes exist for a reason, and many illegal immigrants are from Mexico, but that doesn't mean all are (also, many Mexican immigrants are actually here legally). Immigrants can come from anywhere–– England, Russia, Japan, etc. I'm sure it's easier to sneak into the country illegally coming by land, but still.

Americans are blind to the fact that the real threat here is Canadians!!!

stargirl wrote:This is just a spin-off of #2, but it bothers me how when people think "illegal immigrant" they think "Mexican." Sure, stereotypes exist for a reason, and many illegal immigrants are from Mexico, but that doesn't mean all are (also, many Mexican immigrants are actually here legally). Immigrants can come from anywhere–– England, Russia, Japan, etc. I'm sure it's easier to sneak into the country illegally coming by land, but still.

Americans are blind to the fact that the real threat here is Canadians!!!

Curse those ketchup-flavored-chips-eaters!

Marduk,

Agreed on all points.

But you knew that.

Waldorf and Sauron wrote:Marduk,

Agreed on all points.

But you knew that.

My posts on anything with racial undertones seem to go largely ignored on these forums, for some reason. I can't decide whether it is because everyone agrees with me, or everyone disagrees and thinks I'm too much of an idiot to even bother responding to.

But yeah, Sauron, I figured as much. You and I have pretty much the same political brain.

Marduk wrote: My posts on anything with racial undertones seem to go largely ignored on these forums, for some reason. I can't decide whether it is because everyone agrees with me, or everyone disagrees and thinks I'm too much of an idiot to even bother responding to.

This presupposes that just because you share a radical opinion, it will polarize your audience. Either they agree or disagree. Not so. They can still be apathetic.

We're Americans. We have a lot of practice.

I read everything, but try not to jump in, because it can get really engrossing and suck up a lot of time and I end up feeling the same way: is anybody even reading this stuff?

It's kind of sad: on the Board, our longest answers are the answers we research and think about the most, and I'm sure that these most thoughtful, but too long, posts are skimmed by 99% of readers.

But anyway, I read all y'alls rants here. Even the long ones. Even yours, Vorpal. I have my eye on you.

Yeah, I also agree with everything you said, Marduk. But you probably knew that.

And also I am going to eat some ketchup chips today.

I agree with you on the principle, but I disagree with #1 on your post here. Just because we have a small sample - 11 - doesn't mean it can't produce significant results. Now, if you're saying that in this context, 11 should not be seen as significant, I agree with that totally. There would have to be some non-parametric analysis over a course of many years for 11 homicides to be significant and his analysis is totally devoid of anything resembling real statistical analysis.

As for WaS's comment on people reading responses, I tend to read the responses that require research like this over the non-substantive ones. To be quite honest, I don't think I've read a relationship question in the past two years (been a reader before my mission in 2004 and have read since I returned in 2007) but have read more than 3/4 of the factual questions in that same period. I think the lack of response on Marduk's comment is because this board is composed of pretty intelligent people who all hold moderately conservative to moderately liberal social views (with a few far right and far left exceptions). The issue of distorting facts and using illogical connections to disparage illegal immigrants tends to offend the the common-sense-meter for most people here.

I read all posts on the board that interest me, regardless of length. So don't worry about your hard work going to waste there! But this board is another story. If it is a controversial topic that ensues a 10 paragraph essay from every person responding to one another, I am done. I like to chip in on the topic, but I have no interest in over-long debates.

As for this topic, I thought the statistics were absurd too. We have some problems in our country due to illegal immigrants, such as the lack of taxes from them, but looking at 18 data points and tossing out half of them isn't the way to show that. I just hate that people can look at articles like this and not be intelligent enough to notice that.