
Most honest cities - snambi
http://www.rd.com/slideshows/most-honest-cities-lost-wallet-test/
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function_seven
Any statisticians want to chime in here? How many wallets should be dropped in
each city before you can reasonably rank them? Or, is it statistically
significant that Lisbon was 1/12, while Helsinki was 11/12? In other words,
even with the small sample sizes, are those two values far enough apart to
state the difference with 95% confidence?

On another note, that site sprang 20 separate trackers/beacons/etc. in
Ghostery. I know at least one was Disqus, but 7 were different beacons, and
the slideshow itself didn't work correctly without disabling it.

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olalonde
I guess the rate would also vary widely depending on which part of the city or
time of the day you drop the wallet.

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danielbarla
Also, quite possibly: day of month (contrast a week before payday vs just
after), temporary local events and conditions (high unemployment one year vs
the previous), and if the wallet contained a tourist's details: the level of
2nd language knowledge predominant in the country (e.g. the old lady in one of
the first slides probably didn't speak English, meaning a barrier to contact
or an opportunity for a second individual to pocket the wallet).

Overall though, if you randomised the drops nicely, increased sample size and
repeated them a few times, it might be an interesting study.

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cfontes
Sorry but this is almost a random test.

What neighborhoods? What days? What hours?

All that can make a difference and quite a big one.

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nichtich
Wallet is not a good testing device. It's a common sense in a lot of people
that if you see a wallet lying around on the ground, you should never pick
that up. If you do, there will be a bunch of thugs showing up from nowhere,
claiming it's their wallet (it is) and there used to be 1000 dollars in that
wallet (there's not). It's one of the oldest tricks.

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cafard
I have never heard of this trick. It must not be popular in Washington, DC.

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zethraeus
It would be great to see this methodology taken to its logical end. Decent
sample sizes and some transparency in how drop sites were chosen, what the
wallet contents were, etc.

The measurement of this kind of empathy seems intuitively valuable. I wonder
what it would correlate with. Probably a higher average standard of living,
but maybe more homogenous societal values? A smaller population?

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Killah911
Meh, article created to maximize clicks, not an objective study by any means.
When you have to click for the next city, that should've been a giveaway.

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bowyakka
The site has according to ghostery 66 trackers on it

that's insane

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wobbleblob
Except for London, the honest to dishonest ranking seems to equate to a
prosperous to impoverished ranking.

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scw
I disagree, there doesn't seem to be a clear relationship with affluence.
Here's the list along with GDP PPP per capita at a country level [1]:

    
    
      Helsinki, Finland   11/12   35771
      Mumbai, India        9/12    3843
      Budapest, Hungary    8/12   19497
      New York, US         8/12   51704
      Moscow, Russia       7/12   17518
      Ambsterdam, NL       7/12   41527
      Berlin, DE           6/12   38666
      Ljubljana, Slovenia  6/12   27837
      London, UK           5/12   36569
      Warsaw, PL           5/12   20562
      Bucharest, Romania   4/12   12722
      Rio, Brazil          4/12   11747
      Zurich, Switzerland  4/12   44864
      Prague, CZ           3/12   27000 
      Madrid, Spain        2/12   30058
      Lisbon, Portugal     1/12   23047
    

n.b. How about 'least honest source of pageviews' for Readers Digest on this
article?

1\. International Monetary Fund, 2012 data.

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wobbleblob
I think you need to look at the City level, not country level - I know from
experience that one city in that list is a poor dilapidated hell hole in a
wealthy country - but you're right, London isn't the only outlier.

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beautybasics
As an Indian both humbled and surprised to see Mumbai at top of the list.

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snogglethorpe
Where's the complete list of cities they tried it in?

... or did they only try the 18 cities included in the slide show, almost all
in Europe?

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function_seven
Yeah, just those 18 cities, 12 wallets in each, for a total of 192 wallets.

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gordaco
16 cities, 16*12=192. The first, 18th and 19th slides did not refer to any
city.

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riffraff
I got to the bottom of the list thinking "damn it, rome is the most
dishonest?", but it wasn't even in the list :)

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gordaco
As anecdotic and not rigorous this is, I fully expected Madrid (or any Spanish
city) to be one of the last :(.

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icebraining
As someone from Lisbon, _ouch_. But it doesn't surprise me, there have always
been plenty of pickpockets in the city, particularly in the more touristy
areas. The cops have identified more than a 1000 in the last five years.

That said, as far as I know we fare much better on violent crimes, and in
general I've rarely felt unsafe on the city, even walking alone at 3am and
later.

