Poll: Which crime is up in London over the last year?

[NitroNutter]

Originally Posted by Chris T

Indeed. I only chose 'all of the above' because in my experience, that's always the right answer when a multi-choice question offers it!

Actually thast has to be the most illogical reason to select that option ever.

For "All the above" to be the correct answer is in fact a multiplication of the odds of all the answers and therefore in actual fact the one that is most likely to be incorrect.

ie: In this poll there were 4 options which if you really didnt know the answers to, you had a 1 in four chance of being correct on each individual selection, for all the answers to be correct and therefore validating selecting "all the above" you would need to roll up the 4 odds of 4/1, this leads to a nice payout at williams hills if you win but most roll up bets like this actually lose, even those done on each way instead of on the nose.

One has to wonder if this proves that people do vote simply for the sake of voting ?

[Chris]

Originally Posted by NitroNutter

Actually thast has to be the most illogical reason to select that option ever.

For "All the above" to be the correct answer is in fact a multiplication of the odds of all the answers and therefore in actual fact the one that is most likely to be incorrect.

ie: In this poll there were 4 options which if you really didnt know the answers to, you had a 1 in four chance of being correct on each individual selection, for all the answers to be correct and therefore validating selecting "all the above" you would need to roll up the 4 odds of 4/1, this leads to a nice payout at williams hills if you win but most roll up bets like this actually lose, even those done on each way instead of on the nose.

One has to wonder if this proves that people do vote simply for the sake of voting ?

Nice bit of maths, that. However, pardon me if I think it's your analysis that lacks a little logical thought. This is not a maths exercise, it's an opinion survey, so trying to establish the correct answer based on mathematical probability is a bit pointless.

Multi-choice questions that are designed to prove a point frequently seek to emphasise it with an 'all of the above' or a 'none of the above' option*. On the basis that this thread apparently seeks to prove a point of some kind, going for that option was a reasonable guess.

Does this thread prove that people vote for the sake of voting? Well I didn't think it needed a thread to prove it. We discuss and we vote because we enjoy doing it. Why else would we be members of a discussion forum?

* I completed some fraud awareness training last week in which every single question with an 'all of the above' option, had that option as its correct answer.

[Hom3r]

I wouldn't say that murder is up, its just that it is getting more coverage that the others.

[Damien]

BBKing, Can you tell us or let us know where this is going now?

[NitroNutter]

Originally Posted by Chris T

Nice bit of maths, that. However, pardon me if I think it's your analysis that lacks a little logical thought. This is not a maths exercise, it's an opinion survey, so trying to establish the correct answer based on mathematical probability is a bit pointless.

Multi-choice questions that are designed to prove a point frequently seek to emphasise it with an 'all of the above' or a 'none of the above' option*. On the basis that this thread apparently seeks to prove a point of some kind, going for that option was a reasonable guess.

Does this thread prove that people vote for the sake of voting? Well I didn't think it needed a thread to prove it. We discuss and we vote because we enjoy doing it. Why else would we be members of a discussion forum?

* I completed some fraud awareness training last week in which every single question with an 'all of the above' option, had that option as its correct answer.

Thats fair enough, i wont dispute your experience, if theres a question with that as one of a multiple choice answers and the "all" answer is correct then that or those questions and answers were designed that way, still even then if you did not know fact the answers then that answer still has the most odds against being correct and there are occasions in my experience where that is thrown in as a red herring in such questionaires but not allways, however in this case even if only five minutes after the inital poll was posted the "all" option was an added answer, which if there is as you and others appear to beleive any point to be proved by the poll over and above general interest survey would have meant the correct answer didnt exist to begin with. Of course if places like mensa can dish out questions where the answer is missing/incorrect or theres more than one suitable answer that would fit but they only have listed the one, its very possible the OP did omit the correct answer but its also much less likely to be the case and therefore increases what is allready poor odds of that answer being correct on this occasion tremendously.

[Chris]

Indeed ... and sadly I answered the poll before reading down the thread and discovering the answer I chose was added at a later point!

[BBKing]

its very possible the OP did omit the correct answer but

You could always ask him - I didn't omit the correct answer, but I did fairly late on in writing the poll think of putting in 'all of the above', but then forgot. It was added within a very few minutes after (I think) about two votes.

Anyway, Xaccers has evidently blown the gaff <g> by blatantly going and looking up the figures and in any case the government spin machine came out over the last couple of days which rather spoils it, as no one will believe it now.

I did of course have an ulterior motive, which is based around demonstrating the availability error, which states that people place more trust in facts received recently (e.g. the recent London shootings and stabbings) than those received over a longer period (i.e. that crime rates fluctuate, putting resources into policing helps, having a healthy economy helps enormously, local accountability helps, centralised micromanagement and targets doesn't help). This is something one needs to be very aware of, since it crops up all the time and is hard to avoid in a 24 hour rolling news environment. Today's Independent front page and other discussion about the warmest April since whenever rely on the availability error to 'prove' global warming, while proper science on things like sea ice gets less coverage as it (because it's proper) takes place over a long period.

Other examples are the paedophile scares (if you want to keep your children safe, spend more time teaching them about road safety than stranger danger), the discussion last year about how unsafe Boeing 737s are after a couple of crashes in a short period (since when we've had one of the safest years in aviation ever). Statistics and probability has a nasty habit of sneaking up on you if you don't guard yourself against bias. Here's a good start: http://www.overcomingbias.com/

One interesting thing shown up by the figures was the decline in murders. As far as I can see it, each crime of murder isn't equal to a single murder victim - after all, 52 people were murdered on 7/7, but I suspect that counts as four crimes*, or 2/3 of the reduction from 168 to 162 over the year.

* Four murderers, four weapons, four locations = four offences, by my reckoning.

[Locky]

all of them especialy rape, get a good few somalians in london...

[foreverwar]

Originally Posted by Locky

all of them especialy rape, get a good few somalians in london...

Locky, try reading the post above yours - it explains it very well, and there are not very many big words.

Or as Xaccers says in post 27
"Overall crime fell according to the MET police in the past year, gun crime was down (see, you shouldn't take what you read as the whole story), robbery was up 1% overall, but up 17% against businesses."

But let's not let facts get in the way of a racist slur, shall we?

[Locky]

Originally Posted by foreverwar

Locky, try reading the post above yours - it explains it very well, and there are not very many big words.

Or as Xaccers says in post 27
"Overall crime fell according to the MET police in the past year, gun crime was down (see, you shouldn't take what you read as the whole story), robbery was up 1% overall, but up 17% against businesses."

But let's not let facts get in the way of a racist slur, shall we?

well not everything they publish is errrrr correct, they are not going to say oh yeah err london all crime is up are they ? wether it be the truth or not..

[foreverwar]

Originally Posted by Locky

well not everything they publish is errrrr correct, they are not going to say oh yeah err london all crime is up are they ? wether it be the truth or not..

So what will your response be when "they" report that crime is up? Will you think that, in fact, crime has fallen and "they" are trying to hide the fact?

Or do you only believe headlines/news that reinforce your prejudices? (which I think is part of the point that BBK was making (imho) when he started this thread).

[Stuart C]

Originally Posted by Locky

well not everything they publish is errrrr correct, they are not going to say oh yeah err london all crime is up are they ? wether it be the truth or not..

Actually, in the past, they have..

[danielf]

Originally Posted by BBKing

I did of course have an ulterior motive, which is based around demonstrating the availability error

More commonly known as the availability heuristic,which reflects the fact that, although technically it is an error, it kind of makes sense given the amount of information humans have to deal with.

[Xaccers]

I actually noticed a BBC article about it whilst bored at work a week or so ago.