I have read through the grooming report from the Home Office.
Here, in this thread, I will take you through the mathematical hoops they have jumped through in this deeply flawed analysis.
Thread 👇
One way to force a conclusion is to only range over a small and carefully chosen set of data points. In this case, the report used a limited number of use cases which largely ignored the high profile grooming gangs of Pakistani origin.
A typical data trick is to only use one troublesome dataset - generally the most high profile one. This gives plausible denial on accusations of manipulation of source data.
A tautology is a statement which is true by virtue of its logical form. I.e. a statement which is inevitably true. Such statements are not worth declaring as they have no statistical significance.
In a broadly white country, this statement is tautological. The real question is, were other groups present in a statistical significant way?
The whole point of data analysis is to uncover statistically significance results - not to restate tautologies.
This trick does, however, produce lovely quotable headlines which will reassure people of their own anecdotal conclusions.
_This is what we call “the pericope trick”_
Whenever you don’t want to use a data item, you can just blame data quality. In this case, they often cited data quality on ethnicity classifications.
The UK ethnicity enumeration is flawed in many areas.
In any given set of statements, there will be a range of values. Each item in the range will then have a corresponding frequency count. So some items might be present once and others hundreds of times.
_This is what we call “the range trick”_
A final trick I will mention is to mix-up the definition of data types and classes. You can, for example, deliberately use nationality in place of ethnicity when it suits your cause.
_This is what we call “the predicate trick”_
More from Economy
1/OK, let's take a little break from Coup Twitter, and think about an economic issue:
How can we build up the wealth of the middle class?
2/The typical American has surprisingly little wealth compared to the typical resident of many other developed countries.
This is a fact that is not widely known or appreciated.
3/Now, some people argue that stuff like Social Security or social insurance programs should be included in wealth. But I chose to focus on private wealth because I think having assets you can sell whenever you want is important to
4/For many decades after World War 2, middle-class wealth in America was on a smooth upward trajectory.
Then the housing crash came, and all that changed. Suddenly the rich were still doing well but everyone else was seeing the end of their American Dream.
5/Why the divergence?
Because the American middle class has its wealth in houses -- specifically, in the houses they live in.
It's the rich who own stocks.
How can we build up the wealth of the middle class?
2/The typical American has surprisingly little wealth compared to the typical resident of many other developed countries.
This is a fact that is not widely known or appreciated.
3/Now, some people argue that stuff like Social Security or social insurance programs should be included in wealth. But I chose to focus on private wealth because I think having assets you can sell whenever you want is important to
Yes, these numbers don't include things like Social Security, just privately held wealth. They're not an attempt to capitalize every possible future income stream.
— Noahtogolpe \U0001f407 (@Noahpinion) January 10, 2021
4/For many decades after World War 2, middle-class wealth in America was on a smooth upward trajectory.
Then the housing crash came, and all that changed. Suddenly the rich were still doing well but everyone else was seeing the end of their American Dream.
5/Why the divergence?
Because the American middle class has its wealth in houses -- specifically, in the houses they live in.
It's the rich who own stocks.
