It really doesn’t and I sense that you seem to be downplaying the whole concept that statistics can be interpreted in many different ways.
Edit: I can’t reply to your reply, I think it is a new hacker news feature that’s trying to slow down these back and forths. I listed several ways we could control the data, and I’m not proficient enough in statistics to do all that myself.
One talking point is: per police interaction, an unarmed non-Hispanic Caucasian person has a 4 in 10000 chance of being shot while an unarmed African American has a 3 in 10000 ... so the only huge person actually has a higher level of risk per interaction.
Again, this is not my area of expertise.
I’m not suggesting what all these numbers mean. I am suggesting that when you bring numbers, it’s only fair to discuss different ways to view the numbers.
> It really doesn’t and I sense that you seem to be downplaying the whole concept that statistics can be interpreted in many different ways.
Statistics can be presented in any number of ways; data can be used to lie in any number of directions.
But if you're not going to come here with a counterproposal, you're only undermining the movement Black Americans have been struggling with for so long by stating obliquely that these numbers are a lie.
Edit per yours (sorry you've been hit by rate limits. I get the feeling):
> One talking point is: per police interaction, an unarmed non-Hispanic Caucasian person has a 4 in 10000 chance of being shot while an unarmed African American has a 3 in 10000 ... so the only huge person actually has a higher level of risk per interaction.
The unknown variable here is the number of police interactions by race and whether they were the initiator or the intended target (or suspect, if a crime had taken place). That's why it's normally just reduced to shootings by police.
If you have the details and the exact breakdowns, it'd be helpful. But the BJS doesn't seem to discriminate between whether someone initiated the contact or whether they're the target of law enforcement action.
Otherwise, this is a false analogy, since the normalized measurement accomplishes precisely this.