The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

Re:The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen... by projct on Thursday January 09, 2014 @01:52PM (#7032348)

I'm not looking at the average for the whole country, I am looking at a specific piece of the FBI crime data, and comparing that to what should be by your own logic numbers that are already on the high side for other countries. In fact, the group I picked is of only areas with a population of less than 10,000, including areas where there is no population at all, as well as universities and colleges, excluding suburbs. It's about as biased toward the point you are trying to make as you can get from this data source and it still doesn't line up with what you are claiming.

Feel free to provide evidence for your claim as you still have not done so.

Here is one nonpartisan resource about healthcare I have offhand and a summary video by john green for those who don't feel like reading so much: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-u... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSjGouBmo0M

Relevant points from it: no, obesity does not account for a significant portion; yes, it affects even those who pay; yes you need to look at a lot of data; and no the data does not agree with you.

The John Green video has 2 other links of interest in the description, too.

Your claims are still entirely unsubstantiated, and you keep throwing in more of them instead of backing your existing claims up with data.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen... by mikeash on Thursday January 09, 2014 @03:27PM (#7032957)

Taking the average of every place in the country with a population under 10,000 does not strike me as being even close to "as biased... as you can get" toward my point. You're still discussing the mean, while the original claim was about the median. If crime is indeed highly clumpy, as I've proposed, then it's probably highly clumpy in communities of under 10,000 people too. The mean could therefore easily be high while the median remains low.

For more on my reasoning, see my reply elsewhere:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024053

And yes, a lot of it is handwaving and speculation. The data I'd need just doesn't appear to exist, since you'd have to take it down to the neighborhood level. That said, I think it's superior to discuss without data, while admitting that the data isn't there, than tho discuss with data that doesn't actually say what it's claimed to say.

Regarding healthcare, your first link does not mention inferior outcomes at all. It does not state, but heavily implies, that our outcomes are not significantly better or worse. I briefly searched around that site for other articles but couldn't find anything that discusses the health care system in isolation from the confounding factors. And there is no way I'm going to believe that obesity is not a significant factor here without something to back it up, given that obesity in the US is a factor in about 1/5th of all deaths.

[ Parent | on HN ]