A sidebar to my dislike of statistics. Statistics claim that women are less likely to commit violent crimes, but in my own ANECDOTAL experience, women have perpetrated about 80% of the violence that has ever been directed at me. I’m talking about the initiation of physical violence. I’m talking about violence where I felt that I had to physically defend myself or risk being seriously hurt only to be villified later for hitting a woman. Yes there are all sorts of explanations as to why these events occured and I am not saying I was a ‘victim’ only that the statistics are not an accurate reflection of the human relationships that I took a part in. So how do your statistics even apply to me? It’s great to talk about them, but I’m part of the percentage to which those statistics are false. However, anecdotal evidence is not appreciated here, whereas specious statistics are taken seriously, when the only reason the statistics are taken seriously is because it’s too difficult to debunk them, and with as broad a subject as the racism among a populace of nearly 280m there is no way to debunk it but with more statistics, so you have an argument of statistics against statistics, with no real way to verify them or not. So in the real world in which I live my day to day life your statistics hold no meaning for me at all because they don’t say anything about the how or the why.
Erek