From: solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky)
Subject: Re: THE HOAXER PROJECT REPORT (Racist and Anti-Semitic Hoaxes and more!)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: world,local
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 21:52:09 GMT

In article <1992Apr14.191018.10563@EE.Surrey.Ac.UK>, ees2as@ee.surrey.ac.uk (A Shafarenko) writes:
|> Ralf>>
|> 
|> [staff deleted]
|> 
|>      Writing about this problem in his nationally syndicated column in
|> January 1988, conservative columnist PATRICK J. BUCHANAN referred to
|> Prof. WILLIAM WILBANKS, professor of criminal justice at Florida
|> International University and author of _The Myth of a Racist Criminal
|> Justice System_.  Here is what the professor found, buried in the
|> nation's crime statistics:
|> 
|>      "There is interracial violence in America.  In 1985, 629,000
|>      interracial crimes were reported (where victims survived to
|>      identify the criminal); but nine out of ten were committed by
|>      blacks against whites.  Where white criminals, 98 percent of the
|>      time, prey on other whites -- to rape, rob and assault -- black
|>      criminals chose fellow blacks as victims less than half the time.
|>      Black criminals seem to prefer attacking white people.  While only
|>      2 percent of the victims chosen by white criminals are black, more
|>      than 50 percent of the victims targeted by black criminals -- to
|>      rape, rob and assault -- are white."
|> 
|> .....
|> 
|> Fine, I've never heard an absurdity of a more refined sort. In fact, being 
|> professor in the U.S. doesn't necessarily mean being numerate. The professor
|> simply can't do numbers -- yeah, he's not a mathematician, he's a lawyer.

What follows after this is a numerically incorrect analysis of the situation
caused by the authors hatred of b-cpu's latest article.

If 10% of our population (black or white) perpetrated 1 crime, and each of them
chose a person randomly from the rest of the population then you would get the
following statistics:

(% = % of total pop of group perpetrator is from *
     % of people commiting crimes *
     % of total pop of group the crime is perpetrated against)

6.4% of the population are white criminals who attack whites (80% * 10% * 80%)
1.6% of the population are white criminals who attack blacks (80% * 10% * 20%)
1.6% of the population are black criminals who attack whites (20% * 10% * 80%)
0.4% of the population are black criminals who attack blacks (20% * 10% * 20%)


Comparing this to the given data, 1 out of 2 interracial crimes should be
perpetrated by blacks. Instead it is 9 out of 10.

The figure that 50% of all crimes commited by blacks are against whites, was not
used independently, but was compared to the fraction of white crimes commited
against blacks. By comparing the two figures you eliminate nearly all of the
ghetto effect, with the remaining factors equally likely to pull it in either
direction. The ratio of the two fractions given in the article is 25. That means
that a black criminal is 25 times more likely to commit a crime against a white,
that a white is against a black. My calculations show that the two percetages
should be 80% and 20% yeilding a factor of 4. Both figures demonstate a
considerable disparity. It is a perfectly legitimate conclusion that blacks
prefer attacking whites, and white criminals avoid blacks. Additionally, there is
a considerable body of cultural data which would provide reasons for this
disparity.

Jason W. Solinsky
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy