Summations Only

Did you see Message 1063?

Yes, the fact that you were describing something that couldn't possibly be true about the image you were showing me was my point all along. But the line doesn't rise from there. It rises from ("very close to") -1, -1. I'm fundamentally at a loss to explain your bizzarre intransigence on this point.

crsashfrog continues to be stupid: Get a magnifying glass. The trendline crosses the x axis at x=-.8235 and it crosses the y axis at -1.2.

You... do understand that using a magnifying glass on my screen is just going to show me bigger pixels, right?Talk about "continuing to be stupid."

Percy writes: Huh??? y = 6.8x + 5.6 <==== looks like 5.6 to me.What did I miss?

That you've been defending someone who doesn't know anything about statistics.

You're making the very good point that correlation doesn't imply causation, but in this case we already know several things. We know that guns cause gun deaths. We also know mathematically that 0 guns must correspond to 0 gun deaths and that you cannot have any gun deaths until the number of guns rises above 0. Guns are a prerequisite for gun deaths, and therefore we know that increasing the number of guns increases the number of gun deaths.I think that at heart your argument is actually the same as Crash's, namely that with increasing gun ownership at some point gun deaths begin decreasing because of the deterrent effect. The available data we have doesn't support this, the anecdotal stories aren't worth much, and just a few moments thought about the likelihood of your gun being available and loaded at the moment you need it illustrates the inherent weakness of the deterrence argument.Eternal vigilance is required for a gun to be an effective deterrent, but a gun once owned is a threat that never ends. Normal everyday human qualities like absentmindedness and lack of interest and fatigue and so on just compound the problem. The topic of many casual conversations is someone doing something stupid. We all do stupid things. Even the smartest of us does stupid things, even vice presidents. The gun lobby advocates arming even more people, and that's just a recipe for more gun deaths.--Percy

Whoops, I was playing with the best-fit website in another window and glanced at the wrong image. The correct figure for the y-intercept is obviously 5.6. The point is that obviously the line couldn't go through 0,0 with a non-zero y-intercept. I was explaining why the best-fit line makes sense by describing what we know must be mathematically true, that 0 guns must correspond to 0 gun deaths, and that the line can only rise from there. That's precisely what the best-fit line of real-world data shows, though of course it can't be expected to go through 0,0 - it would be amazing if it did.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Did you try Ctrl-Shft-+ a few times?But here is your magnifying glass: y = 6.8x + 5.6solve for y when x=0 and for x when y=0.I admit that the line looks black now, but my lcd screen tilted a bit shows a dark blue tint.

Sorry, I was playing with the best-fit software in another window to verify my explanation to Crash of how it worked, and I glanced at the wrong image when I needed the y-intercept value. Obviously the y-intercept is 5.6.--Percy

Ok, yes, that's true.What I'm pointing out is in the places with the highest homicide rates, where one is more likely to be shot by a gun, the answer to that problem isn't to arm more people. In fact, the opposite is true. I looked around and couldn't find those numbers. What is a fact is that NY some of the strictest gun laws in all of the US. NY Gun LawsAlso, Manhattan is the safest big city to live in. And this has all been in the last 20 years. More cops with guns on the streets and less civilians with guns OVERALL has I'm sure helped in the decline of crime and murder rates.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

But again, both CS and I have several times asked, what's the point in being concerned about gun deaths specifically? Dead is dead. Homicide is homicide, and I can't see the social interest in merely shifting gun homicides to an equivalent number of knife homicides, rat-poison homicides, necktie homicides, or bare-hands homicides.You're broadly interchanging "gun deaths" and homicides and, it feels to me, hoping we won't notice as you switch back and forth. Maybe that's not intended but regardless, I wish you'd stop. If you're making an argument about gun deaths, make an argument about gun deaths and don't use a chart of homicides in support of it. If you're making an argument about homicides, make it about homicides, but know that the trivial point that "guns cause gun deaths" lends no support to it. Well, we have no data on it because it's impossible to collect. How could you develop a database of murders that didn't happen? How could you develop a sample of people who should have been murdered but weren't because they were armed? How could you capture even a single such event with any statistical rigor?It beggars belief to suggest that it doesn't ever happen, and the anecdotes tell us that it is happening, even if we can't determine the statistical significance of it happening. On the basis of that non-knowledge, however, it's every bit as unreasonable to suggest that you know that gun ownership causes more gun injuries than it prevents homicides (or rapes, or thefts) as it is to suggest that it doesn't. To say that the statistical inference "proves" that you're more at risk from owning a gun than you are from crimes you might experience as a result of not having one is an incredibly naive application of statistics, since it ignores both the uneven spatial distribution of crime and exactly what we can't actually know - how often guns are used to stop crimes from happening, or reduce their severity. That's really a ridiculously stupid thing to say, and I would say it typifies the fetishistic fear and power gun opponents frequently attribute to firearms.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Yes, I heard you the first half-dozen times, and my reply is again to remind you that there - 0,0 - is precisely where the line does not rise from.I don't know how to be any clearer than that. It doesn't go anywhere near 0,0, much less rise from it.

So your position is that US citizens are just more homicidal than those in other comparable nations and that looser gun laws in the US just provide a convenient means for those heightened homicidal urges to be acted upon. Is this correct?Because that still doesn't seem to explain the correlation between high gun prevalence and high homicide rate. You now seem to be saying Americans would be equally homicidal whatever weapon ends up being used. Is this correct? As I now understand your argument Americans are just more homicidal and would, if they didn't have guns, just find other ways of maintaining their high homicide rate. But if that is the case then there is no real link between gun prevalence and homicide rate.....In order to aid understanding can you explain how you would expect the relation between gun prevalence and homicides to manifest itself if gun prevalence went down significantly? What would happen to US homicide rates in your view? If a decrease in one doesn't equate to a decrease in the other in what way are you suggesting they are correlated? What is confusing (some might say contradictory) is your position that high gun prevalence and high homicide rate are related but that a reduction in one won't correspond (note I didn't say cause) to a reduction in the other.This doesn't make any sense at all.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

crashfrog says: You have it wrong here - what I wanted you to do was to get off the -1,-1 versus 0,0 shit and look at the non-USA data. CS said it looked like buckshot. One of the purposes of finding a trendline is to project it out. So find the non-USA trendline (including Argentina and the other 9 countries Dr.A had!) and project it out to the USA gun ownership value for X and see what kind of Y it comes up with. What kind of confidence do we have in the non-USA line? What if it matched anyway - would we still be right to make the claim that they are proportional? Argue from there.HTH