[R] iraq statistics - OT

[Gabor Grothendieck]

Note that the reference to icasualty.com should be icasualty.org.

On 5/23/06, Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/19/06, Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I came across this one:
> >
> > http://www.nysun.com/article/32787
> >
> > which says that the violent death rate in Iraq (which presumably
> > includes violent deaths from the war) is lower than the violent
> > death rate in major American cities.
> >
> > Does anyone have any insights from statistics on how to
> > interpret this?
> >
>
> Since I posted this a number of people have responded online and
> offline and have included a number of links.  I am providing the
> links from the offline responders.
>
> I was hoping to summarize all this in an objective fashion
> focused on statistics but there is enough
> information here that I was concerned I might not do a thorough
> job so I am simply providing the links plus some short comments
> to summarize the links that did not already appear on the list.
>
> The original idea of making this comparison was apparently due to
> US Rep. Steve King and the first link gives
> his rebuttal to critics who made similar comments to those
> shown on the list so far.  His main points are that the data does
> not come from him, he used published figures on icasualty.com
> (and for US the sources cited in the link) and that his original
> comments were in the context of civilian safety and so it would
> not be appropriate to include police which is why he excluded them
> (I had originally thought it included all violent deaths but that is
> not the case).
> Since my original post was about vacationing in Iraq I would
> think that excluding police would also apply to that too.   A number of
> people on the list did point out that defining violent death was key.
>
> http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008402
>
> Part of the previous link is in response to the following link:
> http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008392#iraq
>
> Original source of the iraq data:
> http://icasualties.org/oif/
>
> Story of one person who tried to pursue the numbers:
> http://zenbeatnik.blogspot.com/2006/05/where-numbers-lead.html
>