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Racism
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Post by
168916
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Post by
168916
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Post by
MyTie
For what we're talking about, profiling means you analyze past crime data, use it to make a predictive model, then go out in the field and frisk people that the model predicts are likely to be criminals more often than people it doesn't. If you're defining profiling to mean something like questioning white people to find a specific white person, then we're talking past each other.
Maybe I'm dense as a log. Explain why this wouldn't work to me. Don't give me a theorem that has pages and pages of mathematical equations on statistics. Use layman's terms. Break it down for me. How in this world would this be ineffective at finding criminals, or equally as effective at finding criminals as completely random stops.
Post by
168916
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Post by
Squishalot
Overfitting is when your predictive model describes the incidental features of the training data rather than the correlations between the variables being modeled. If you google image search on the phrase it should be pretty clear. If your training data no longer reflects the same correlations as the real data, your model isn't overfitted, it's unfitted, or fitted to the wrong thing, or somesuch.
Noise, providing that you have a sufficient data size, doesn't result in overfitting as the size of your population shouldn't allow for random correlations of any meaningful size.
Looking for a specific person given their description is not profiling. For what we're talking about, profiling means you analyze past crime data, use it to make a predictive model, then go out in the field and frisk people that the model predicts are likely to be criminals more often than people it doesn't. If you're defining profiling to mean something like questioning white people to find a specific white person, then we're talking past each other.
I said it was an extreme example, did I not? Let's expand it out then. If you have information that members of a white gang are going to cause trouble at an event, they're going to frisk the white folks in the area, not the black ones.
Source? The NYPD sure as hell don't say that, and at least in America I don't think any other agency does either. They say they don't profile by race at all.
I said 'I believe' didn't I? I'm trying to read between the lines of what they're explicitly saying, because I don't believe that they don't profile by race at all, and I'd feel concerned that they were leaving out what could potentially be (noting that we don't have evidence for
or
against) a meaningful indicator.
Still begging the question.
I'm not making any claim about whether it's effective, which is why I caveated it with "if it's appropriate to". I'm saying that if it is effective, I have no qualms in using it. If it's not effective, why would I want to use it?
@ Elhonna - that thought crossed my mind as well, but I don't think it's sufficient argument to demonstrate that minorities aren't being 'picked on', for lack of a better term.
Post by
MyTie
I guess I'm just dense. I've never had so much trouble trying to understand such a simple concept before. At least, I think I understood it before talking to you about it, fenomas. Now, I have no idea.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I know it's not proof that they aren't profiling racially, but neither is the percentage proof that they are. I just bring it up because so many people automatically claim that it is racial profiling whenever there is a higher percentage of a minority involved in arrests, stops, etc., without even considering that they might be profiling based on other legitimate factors and happening to have more minorities fit those factors. Then those same people will say how dare you correlate race to crime rates- clearly it's based on other factors and the racial make-up is based on minorities being economically downtrodden.
Don't get me wrong- I DO agree that a disproportionate number of minorities live in low-income, economically depressed areas, and those kinds of economic situations go hand in hand with desperation and high crime. I don't think it's a matter of race- I think it's a matter of income. But it seems like people don't want to even look at the possibility that police could specifically be looking in high crime areas, and for specific behaviors or dress codes (gang colors), which are legitimate factors to look for, and be running into the higher percentage of minorities because that's the demographic of those areas.
I don't think it's proof they're not racially profiling- I just don't think the numbers by themselves are proof that they ARE racially profiling. And if the crime and murder rates have dropped 20-30%, and 10% of people stopped have something criminal on them at that moment, I'd say that those are pretty high percentages for it to be random searches of just a specific minority.
Post by
MyTie
If it were the difference between my kids eating or not eating, I turn to a life of crime.
Post by
gnomerdon
Don't get me wrong- I DO agree that a disproportionate number of people of minorities live in low-income, economically depressed areas, and those kinds of economic situations go hand in hand with desperation and high crime. I don't think it's a matter of race- I think it's a matter of income. But it seems like people don't want to even look at the possibility that police could specifically be looking in high crime areas, and for specific behaviors or dress codes (gang colors), which are legitimate factors to look for, and be running into the higher percentage of minorities because that's the demographic of those areas.
good post
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I agree that having a stop demographic that is significantly different than the neighborhood demographic is much more indicative of racial profiling. I was kind of late to the party, which is why I had asked if it had already been addressed.
I hate racism, but I also hate it when racism is called at every opportunity regardless of whether or not it's warranted, because it weakens the case when it's actually appropriate. When for every legitimate case, someone is petitioning to change the name of Black Olives, or something like that, it lets people who are inclined to do so dismiss legitimate complaints. So I am always looking to get more details about a situation before casting in with one side or the other.
Were a lot of the tickets/arrests thrown out, or for things like "jaywalking" or not having and ID, or something similarly questionable? Or were they mostly for things like concealed weapons, drugs, underage alcohol, etc.?
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
I guess I'm just dense. I've never had so much trouble trying to understand such a simple concept before. At least, I think I understood it before talking to you about it, fenomas. Now, I have no idea.
Well, you're wiser than when you started then. I don't think it's a simple topic at all though - serious issues rarely are, or they'd have been sorted out by now. In general whenever I know an issue is contentious but it seems pretty straightforward, I take that as evidence that I don't understand it yet. (Specifically that I don't understand the arguments of the side that seems to me the weaker.)
The problem is, that I don't know why I don't understand it. I have a very very straight forward, seemingly common sense idea: If A is more statistically likely than B to be X, and you choose A, you should be more likely to get X. You have told me that is incorrect. You then dumped evidence on me that makes no sense whatsoever, at least, to little ol me, not a mathematician at all. Think you could lower yourself to 'splain it to me in country bumpkin language.
Post by
168916
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Post by
Squishalot
Out of curiosity guys, because we're staying too far off topic, did you want to create a new topic for conditional probability? Otherwise, we're going to spend the next two pages again discussing it.
Edit: Actually, don't worry, I'll do it. I want to expand on your example.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
If A is more statistically likely than B to be X, and you choose A, you should be more likely to get X.
Correct, in and of itself. I have not suggested otherwise. (I know you probably don't believe that, but feel free to check, I haven't. The argument I told you was incorrect was quite different.)Here you go:
2. It's not an effective way to police. It may be that more murders in NYC are committed by blacks than whites, but that's clearly a correlation, not a causation. There are better indicators, and police watching for gang affiliation or behavior patterns consisent with drug dealing will be more effective than police looking at race.
(Note: The fact that the NYC frisk law has lowered crime rates does not imply that profiling is an effective way to decide whom to frisk. The result of that law is that the police frisk more people with less cause - that's going to affect crime rates even if you choose people to frisk at random.)It is effective, statistically. If we steralize the argument of emotion, and look at the math, if a certain race is statistically more likely to perpetuate a crime, and that race is targeted by law enforcement more than other races, the law enforcement will be more effective than if it were evenly applied. To say "it isn't effective", I'd like to know how you arrived at that conclusion.to which you repliedFirstly you are conflating causation with correlationNot at all. I never said anything about correlation, nor what causes what. I said that if you apply a remedy to a statistically more likely situation in which the problem exists, that problem will be statistically more likely to find the remedy. That has nothing to do with correlation or causation. I actually don't know what you are talking about here. Seriously... whatwhich is the source of my ire.
Post by
Magician22773
Sorry, I am at work, so I can't get as involved in this as I would like, but I did do a couple quick searches on New York. I got different numbers from different sites, but the general idea was pretty similar.
One site showed the population of NYC was roughly 16% Black, yet 66% of all violent crimes were committed by blacks, 80% of all shootings, and 71% of all robberies. As for whites, they accounted for 65.7% of the population, but were responsible for only 5% of violent crimes, 1.4% of shootings, and just under 5% of robberies.
Just looking at this small bit of raw data, anyone should be able to see that it is very much more likely that a black in NYC is more likely to be a criminal than a white. That is not racism, that is factual data.
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