Summations Only

It's actually been my contention throughout that "emotional responses" aren't particularly helpful in responding to this situation, but it's nice to arrive at least one point of agreement.

Obviously not, but the trend line rises from -1, -1 - not from 0,0 as Percy has repeatedly stated. It doesn't even pass through 0,0. And again - not that I expect it to, I expect Percy'd description of what he's showing to be accurate.I don't see how this is difficult to grasp. If you tell me you're showing me a trend line that begins at 0,0 and rises from there, then you should not show me a line that begins at -1, -1 and doesn't even pass through 0,0. Saying one thing and showing another is a misrepresentation. It's the definition of misrepresentation.

But then that means accepting Xongsmith's point - the USA has a far greater rate of homicides than you would statistically expect from just the number of guns we have. Which is dispositive of what the graph was presented in support of - that in the USA, the number of homicides follows a statistical correlation with the number of guns.You can't both accept that the USA is a statistical outlier in terms of the correlation between the number of guns and the number of homicides, and that in the USA the number of homicides is correlated to the number of guns. "Outlier" means that it doesn't follow the general correlation.

Not at all unrelated. I suspect a significant drive of gun sales is the desire on the part of many Americans to be better equipped to commit a homicide.

Then the line described by that equation and the red line on the graph aren't the same line, which is a significant problem if we're expected to accept the accuracy of the graph as it reflects the data it's ostensibly presented as reflecting. He says that's not his point:

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if you really knew anything about statistics you wouldn't expect real world data to go through 0,0.

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He is, in fact, saying the exact opposite of what you say he's saying. Maybe you can get together with him and help him resolve this confusion. I wasn't going to, but Percy insisted that his utter misrepresentation of the data he posted was a function of "something I don't get about statistics." If he hadn't made it personal I probably would have let it go. But to the extent he insists that I'm the one with something to learn, and he's the one to teach it, I'm going to continue to demonstrate that the reverse is true.

As I keep saying, I disagree that the statistical data proves that reducing gun ownership would reduce homicides, or that the statistical correlation between gun ownership and gun injury is proof that individuals should not ever choose to own a gun.I've made this point surely half a dozen times in the past 10 posts of mine; is there some reason you didn't understand it then?

Meanwhile, in a world where nobody thinks it matters if criminals push the physical burden of their crimes off onto their victims:

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ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) Survivors of a stampede in Ivory Coast that killed 61 people, most of them children and teenagers, after a New Year's Eve fireworks display said Wednesday that makeshift barricades stopped them from moving along a main boulevard, causing the crush of people...Local newspapers are speculating that thieves put up the roadblocks so that pickpockets could steal money and mobile phones from the packed-in people.

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http://www.chron.com/...rvivors-blame-barricades-4160840.phpI'd like to forestall the upcoming misrepresentation by urging that people consider this an example of the results of shifting the physical burden of a criminal act to precisely the people under no moral obligation to bear it. Would guns have helped in this specific instance? I can't say that. But this is precisely the identical moral situation as results when those who insist that breaking into an occupied home for burglary "shouldn't carry a death sentence" rob law-abiding citizens of any ability to shift the physical burden of crime back onto criminals.AbE: People die from being punched sometimes. Last year there was a case here in town where a guy was punched during a fight outside a McDonalds, which made him fall over, where he hit his head on the curb and died instantly.You have no right at all to expect that you can punch someone and have them not treat it like a potentially lethal attack because you can be killed by people punching you. A firearm is a perfectly rational defense against someone attacking you with their fists. If you don't want to get shot, I guess, don't go around punching people.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

No, because unlike you I don't make the mistake of equating correlation with causality. Rainy weather is related to people carrying umbrellas, but it doesn't follow from that that if we outlawed umbrellas it would never again rain. Straggler, I don't know how to be any clearer than I have been. You'll have to do a better job of explaining what you're finding so confusing. Yes I think the homicide rate is related to gun ownership. No I don't think reducing the number of guns owned would reduce the homicide rate. There's nothing contradictory here unless you make the elementary statistical error of assuming that correlation ("relatedness", if you prefer) is the same thing as causality. Percy said that.

You asked and I answered, already. What wasn't clear the first time? They're related in that there's a correlation between high rates of gun ownership and a high incidence of homicide. There's a correlation because Americans are more homicidal and also they own more guns. When you asked me for a potential mechanism of causality, I told you that it made sense to me that a people who want to commit homicides would own the guns they need to do it. What was unclear about that? Yes, of course. It's the one that seems reasonable because there's a plausible mechanism for causality. Not the one where the putative mechanism of causality makes no sense. Asked and answered. What was confusing the first time?

I'm not "carrying on" anything except that, as usual, when someone says the sky is green and I can look out the window and see that it is not, I opt not to believe anonymous strangers on the internet over the testimony of my own eyes.When you show me a trendline that begins at -1, -1 and call it a trendline that begins at 0,0, there's absolutely no reason I should believe you over my eyes. Why on Earth would I do that? One could waste a lot of time correcting your errors until you're prepared to accept that you're making them. Lucky for you, I guess, I have the time to waste. But you could do us all a favor, and we could return to the topic, when you stop insisting that up is down, left is right, and -1, -1 is the same as 0, 0. Fallacy of denying the antecedent. And asserting that there's no mechanism when I've given you the mechanism is a misrepresentation. Willful, now, because you were already told it was a misrepresentation.

I can only read your words, not your intent. If you think I've somehow managed to come away from your words with precisely the wrong idea, I can only assure you that I've read your posts exactly as you wrote them. But again, the fact that you have no answer except a giant shrug of the shoulders to the points I'm raising against you makes me think you don't understand the statistics you're putting out there. Percy, they're not "senseless accusations." I've explained how they're rational counterpoints to what you're trying to say. I've explained the background that I have that allows me to interpret statistics and make reasonable inferences from them. I've explained how I'm arriving at the interpretations I'm arriving at and invited you to explain how I'm wrong.Your response to all of the above has been to ignore it, throw up your hands, repeat the same things you said before, and then act like it's my fault the discussion isn't going anywhere, all the while promising that there's no point in even responding to me, and then responding to me. So explain to me how I'm the one being unreasonable, here. I'm the one trying to find the basic disconnect between what you think the data says and what it actually says. You're the one making accusations that I'm just making things up and won't see reason. But I didn't make up the fact that you put forward a trendline that begins at -1, -1 and then described it as one that rises from 0,0. That's something you did three times, at least. Like I said in Message 1027, the mechanism is people using firearms to prevent themselves from being murdered without actually firing the weapon. Each additional firearm that allows someone to do that results in one less homicide.

I don't see what your basis is for that inference. People in the "inner city" are probably the least likely to be lawfully carrying firearms for personal defense, as opposed to carrying them as a result of their association with drug crime. Moreover, firing on someone who tries to rob or attack you during a drug crime would be classified a drug-related homicide, not a justifiable self-defense shooting (i.e. it would be a death during the commission of a felony, which is murder.) And I'll believe you just as soon as you can show me evidence.

I think you've misunderstood what line I've been talking about. I've been talking about the trendline on Percy's plot, not the one on Dr. A's.

I'm just saying, when they use those weapons to defend themselves, that's going to be classified as a felony murder, not a justifiable self-defense homicide. The people who merely reveal that they're armed and scare off an assailant aren't going to be statistically captured in any way, but I haven't seen gun opponents respond to that except by saying that there are therefore zero known instances where people use guns to defend themselves.If you can't know how many times it happens, you can't know. Period. And therefore for all we know it happens 200 times a day, or a minute. For all we know firearms in the US save ten lives for every one they take. I don't happen to think that's true, but by the same token it's not reasonable to say that they never save even a single life. Prove it. What's the rate of gun ownership in Manhattan over the past 20 years?

Except that I'm not screaming anything. I'm the one being screamed at that I'm crazy - literally - while politely asking what it is, exactly, I'm being crazy about. And nobody can tell me. I'm not screaming about anything. I'm sitting here, wondering why normally reasonable people are screaming at me. Which is certainly the kind of thing that makes me sit up and take notice, but then I ask them and they can't tell me. So then I start to be pretty sure that you, and they, are the ones with the problem. And sure enough, you are! You're the one with the problem that you can't interpret a simple chart. If you don't know how to read labeled axes, then there's not going to be any way for us to communicate. But it should suffice to ask you to look at this image, the one you've been talking about:And look where that line enters the graph. Let me baby-talk you through it since we're having such a tremendous failure in communication. The X axis is spaced by 1 per tick and the Y axis is spaced 9 per tick. Count back 1 from 0 on the X. That's X = -1. Count down 9 from the 8 on the Y. That's Y = -1. Since that's where the axes meet, that's the origin. This is confirmed by the fact that you've set the Xmin to -1 and the Ymin to -1, as shown in this screencap of the UI of the webpage you're using.I don't understand how you're not seeing that, or how when you look at that graph you see a trendline that passes through 0,0. This isn't me being crazy; this is you not being able to see what's in front of your face. It's fine, it's no problem, that happens sometimes when we make assumptions about how graphs work based on how graphs are usually presented - with an origin at 0,0, for instance - but it's also the kind of thing where graphs can mislead unless you really look at what is being presented. It's like how when you look at this:and you don't notice, until I tell you, that the word "the" is in there twice. You don't expect it so you don't see it. Similarly, you're expecting the intersection of the axes of a graph to be at 0,0, and so you see that on the graph even though that's not what's there. What's hopeless is getting you to admit you made a mistake when you have, especially when it's me you're talking to. Because you're convinced that I won't admit error about things, you're convinced that every time I won't admit that I'm wrong it's because I'm not seeing the truth.But I do admit error. In this thread I've admitted error perhaps a dozen times on a wide variety of subjects, including the population of the United States in the last census. I've not yet seen you admit error about anything. So objectively, if there's someone here in this back-and-forth who won't admit they're making a mistake, it seems most reasonable to me that it's you - particularly since there you are, insisting something about a plainly-labeled chart that I can see just isn't so. It's not been responded to even once. Even getting you to admit that I said it took four posts, Percy.