
Statistic of the Year 2017: Winners announced - colinprince
https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/3675-statistic-of-the-year-2017-winners-announced
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rukittenme
Oof. I hate this article.

Statistics have to be interpreted. Creating a "Statistic of the Year" is about
as asinine and self-congratulatory as Blake Shelton being declared "Sexiest
Man Alive".

What does it even mean?

Take Mrs. Kardashian West's post. Its sufficiently political to cause a
controversy and sufficiently vacuous for readers to imprint their own thoughts
and feelings on it.

What is an "Islamic", "Jihadist", "Immigrant"? If a terrorist travels to
America, with an intent to kill but not an intent to obtain permanent
residency, are they not included in the statistic? If a terrorist kills a
group of people but a "Jihad" has not been formally declared by a group
associated to the terrorist, is that terrorist not included in the statistic?
If a terrorist is inspired by Wahhabis propaganda but is not himself a "true"
Muslim (as defined by the researchers), is he included in the statistic?

The problem with these "award winning" statistics is that they are not, in
fact, statistics. They are award winning implications which themselves are not
born out of the data but are instead imprinted upon it.

The implication that toddlers are more dangerous than terrorists is absurd.
Armed toddlers are the result of freak accidents and careless people.
Terrorist attacks are the result of intentional policy choices. It's not hard
to wonder why people focus so much time, effort, and attention on one rather
than the other.

Consider the following scenario:

You are locked in a room with two other people. To your left, an armed
toddler. To your right, an armed, islamic, jihadist, immigrant, terrorist.
Your mission is to disarm both parties before you are allowed to leave the
room. Who do you disarm first?

If you're the authors of this article, you disarm the toddler. If you're sane
you disarm the terrorist.

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mkl
That scenario is misleading as it assumes there are equal numbers of relevant
toddlers and terrorists.

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rukittenme
Firstly, the scenario is exact in its implication. All things held equal, an
"Islamic", "jihadist", "immigrant" is treated with greater caution than an
"armed" "toddler".

Secondly, you can not infer the population of "armed" "toddlers" or "Islamic",
"jihadist", "immigrants" from this statistic. Terrorists could be incredibly
common and safe or uncommon and dangerous. Increasing their commonality might
not be desirable. Which directly contradicts the implication of the tweet.

Thirdly, proportion the population of toddlers and terrorists however you
wish. Under any proportionment the terrorist would be addressed first. For the
simple fact that terrorists have intent to harm, whereas toddlers are more
likely to harm themselves.

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matiketo
#2 statistic here is also largely bullshit based on a very flawed
understanding of risk. "...help us better understand the world around us",
this stat does the complete opposite.

Further reading:
[https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/942730083973951490](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/942730083973951490)

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pixelperfect
Number of deaths caused by Islamic extremist terror attacks is a fat-tailed
distribution, while deaths caused by lawn mowers is not. There is no organized
movement among lawnmowers to rise up and kill people - the deaths happen by
accident, and the odds of deaths increasing 1000% one year are very, very low.
The same logic does not hold for terrorist attacks. There is no reason to
assume an attack on the scale of 9/11 or greater will never occur again. These
low-probability but highly significant events are not being factored in by Kim
Kardashian West, and a lot of people are not thoughtful enough to consider
them on their own.

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fullshark
The smugness is unbearable.

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quotha
Nassim Nicholas Taleb would absolutely tear those statistics apart.

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mromanuk
> "We are delighted to announce our first ever UK Statistic of the Year and
> International Statistic of the Year, a new initiative that celebrates how
> statistics can help us better understand the world around us"

TL;DR The winner is "This is the annual number of Americans killed, on
average, by lawnmowers - compared to two Americans killed annually, on
average, by immigrant Jihadist terrorists.", and this was shared by Kim
Kardashian.
[https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/825580660337283073?...](https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/825580660337283073?lang=en)

