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Re:LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting c... by samastur on Saturday December 30, 2017 @04:53PM (#16037823)
When number of shootings is 1, you are not actually doing useful statistics. It can easily be an aberration.
Re:LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting c... by davemp on Saturday December 30, 2017 @08:06PM (#16038703)
Mass shootings are almost by definition outliers
Re:LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting c... by PeterisP on Saturday December 30, 2017 @09:28PM (#16039004)
In USA, the measure "number of mass shootings per year" doesn't have real outliers, it has a reasonable number every year. In Norway, it's different, you get a streak of zeroes, followed by a 1.
Re:LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting c... by davemp on Sunday December 31, 2017 @03:55AM (#16039909)
Norway has __considerably__ lower population than the USA. There has to be normalization or your comparison is just bogus.
Re:LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting c... by tveita on Sunday December 31, 2017 @08:14AM (#16040466)
The comparison is bogus, because you can make the numbers arbitrarily high by subdividing into tiny areas and then conveniently ignoring all the places where they are zero.

Why not subdivide further and claim that Buskerud is a veritable warzone, compared to the whole of USA on average?

Re:LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting c... by samastur on Sunday December 31, 2017 @04:26AM (#16039950)
Sure, but that doesn't solve the original problem which is that you picked small population countries with number of shootings too low to do meaningful statistical analysis your way because any rare event will have an outsized effect.

There are however plenty of European countries with populations large enough to avoid this problem (Germany, France, Italy, UK...).

Re:LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting c... by ryanlol on Sunday December 31, 2017 @10:40AM (#16040947)
So why not compare the US to the EU or parts of it?