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Comments on: The Iraqi Death Study https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/ On-line Opinion Magazine...OK, it's a blog Mon, 16 Oct 2006 04:36:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/comment-page-1/#comment-18141 Mon, 16 Oct 2006 04:36:53 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/#comment-18141 The people in charge have a pretty good feel for the numbers of the direct deaths, even if they bury them, but they haven’t been gathering data on the secondary deaths at all.

That, OWL, is what makes this study important, because it is looking at all of the deaths, not just those directly caused by the violence.

Millions died in the Ukraine from famine under Stalin. They were shot, but they died as a result of Stalin’s policy of exporting food for hard currency at a time when their were crop failures.

]]> By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/comment-page-1/#comment-18140 Mon, 16 Oct 2006 03:49:25 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/#comment-18140 I had to take two different statistics courses, a general course for social science and a separate business course for my IT degree. You can’t work in business, technology, science, or much of anything else without a clear understanding of statistics.

When these people get hauled on to talking head segments and they obviously don’t understand the difference between the median and the mean, you really have to wonder why they are in anyone’s rolodex.

]]> By: oldwhitelady https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/comment-page-1/#comment-18139 Mon, 16 Oct 2006 03:45:11 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/#comment-18139 One of the reasons this administration refused to take numbers of the Iraqies killed is so they could refute the numbers given… and so the people back home wouldn’t be upset to learn how much “collateral damage” has been done in the quest for oil.

]]> By: Michael https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/comment-page-1/#comment-18138 Mon, 16 Oct 2006 03:29:02 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/#comment-18138 Mostly I just filter that shit out. I expect politicians to lie, or at least to obfuscate by omission, and I’m rarely disappointed on that score–though I would very much like to be.

On the other hand, I spend most of my working days, and quite a bit of my time in class, surrounded by people who do an awful lot of research involving statistics, and for whom at least a basic understanding of how they work is as elementary as needing to water a plant if you want it to keep growing. It would appear that this supersaturated environment has temporarily blinded me to the overall dearth of statistical understanding in the United States citizenry at large.

Chalk up another success for No Change Left Behind, I guess.

]]> By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/comment-page-1/#comment-18130 Sun, 15 Oct 2006 05:03:22 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/#comment-18130 When the political class makes a point of using statistics almost exclusively to lie, it’s very difficult to find useful,valid research.

]]> By: Michael https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/comment-page-1/#comment-18129 Sun, 15 Oct 2006 03:54:36 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/#comment-18129 Reasonable people who deal with statistics understand that, Michael…

I keep forgetting just how small a subset of the population that class is.

]]> By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/comment-page-1/#comment-18124 Sun, 15 Oct 2006 01:26:19 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/#comment-18124 Reasonable people who deal with statistics understand that, Michael, but if you are ready to complain you pick on every point. You can’t get a 98% CI without people dying under current conditions, so you go with the best model you can.

It’s very frustrating to read what some people are writing, because they are missing the point of the study. Some of those who think they are supporting the study seem to be claiming that the numbers represent those directly killed. Having never done any real research they don’t understand that the norm is for a larger death toll from indirect causes, like famine and disease, than direct causes.

]]> By: Michael https://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/comment-page-1/#comment-18122 Sun, 15 Oct 2006 00:16:36 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2006/10/14/the-iraqi-death-study/#comment-18122 A 95% CI is excellent. Nothing to sneeze at at that level, even if 98% would be (slightly) better.

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