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Comment by runarberg

2 years ago

This link again. People keep posting it and it keeps—rightly—getting flagged. This source is a schoolbook example of lying with statistics, and so far HN seems prerry aware of that.

2 comments

runarberg

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nsguy  2 years ago

Wouldn't it be better to discuss it and for you to take it down point by point and show everyone why it is "lying with statistics"? I only have a B.Sc. and my only observation was the sample size seemed to small and there might have been some cherry picking of the date ranges. You might be correct but we're not getting to discuss that and what are the proper statistical methods one can apply here if we had the data (and I don't think we have data).

This link being wrong however doesn't negate the fact that the only numbers we have come from Hamas that is 1) in most western countries is considered a terrorist organization 2) is one of the sides in this war 3) clearly benefits from distorting the numbers 4) shouldn't be considered a reliable source for anything.

The numbers discussion seems to always come back to in previous rounds of violence those same numbers seemed more or less in the ballpark though there have been major revisions in the past re: the ratio of combatants. (I don't have the link handy but I can find it if you dispute this last bit).