Some practical statistics

[chickenfeet]

Lord Stevens claims 3000 British based Muslims have been through Al Quaeda training camps.

Let's see:

There are 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, of which half, one assumes, are female and unlikely to attend AQ camps. So, 800,000 males.

At least a quarter of those must be too young to have had terrorist training so let's say 600,000 adult males.

So 1 in 200 adult British Muslim males have left the country for terrorist training?

I have my doubts.

Comments

[tanuja.livejournal.com]

This is what happens when people randomly throw out statistics, people like yourself and my husband go "eh, that can't be right" and actually make the effort to work out what the statistics actually mean, before commenting on the viability of the comment. I simply think "oh that's crap", but don't bother with the next step.

So hats off to people like yourself and Mr Tanuja who make the effort to prove the stats are crap, and also to prove that 82% of statistics are made up on the spot ;)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I guess it's what happens when one has been a consultant for twenty five years. testing the reasonableness of data becomes second nature. Perhaps it's the difference between consultants and accountants {snerk}. My employer once got my tax deduction wrong by a factor of three or so. I worked out that it was clearly wrong by approximation in ten seconds. It took the office accountant fifteen minutes to convince himself that I was right because he couldn't accept it until he had worked the correct answer out to the exact penny.

[tanuja.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's the difference between consultants and accountants {snerk}.

To my utter shame, I have no response to this.... :oops: :)

The office accountant sounds like several people I have worked with. Fortunately, Treasury is much more, er, reasonable.