Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 11:49:37 EST
From:         Jamie <PL436000@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Intent, Consent, and Statistics

From:         Andy Freeman <andy@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>

On the Declaration of Independence,

>Sure, it's interesting as evidence about what they thought and meant.
>However, it doesn't tell us anything about "equal" wrt the current
>govt because we've repealed their "intent" on this issue.

Oh, that's true. I thought you were making a special point
about the Declaration that couldn't be made about the
text of the Constitution.

>Nope.  We can demand that they provide the relevant evidence and
>evaluate it for ourselves.  They're expert witnesses, not judges.

That's also true. I should have said, a hostage to HISTORY, not to
historians.

Or is that "an hostage"?

========================================================================
From:         K=A*T <MEC038@UKCC.UKY.EDU>


>No Jamie, not "an" elected body but "the" elected body.

Oh, gosh more problems with articles. Were you and T in the
same grammar class?

> "The" one
>which is mentioned in the Constitution (oh please God, let it be
>mentioned in the Constitution :-).

Oh, sure, it's mentioned a lot. Wow, wouldn't it be surprising
if the Constitution didn't mention the Senate!!!???

>Would Jamie replace approval of the Supreme Court Justices
>by the Senate with the approval of the President?

No. But Jamie would think it was absurd to object to a
Supreme Court Justice on the grounds that he was not elected.

That was the alleged ground of objection to Hillary Clinton
giving advice to her husband.

Of course, Michael Morse says it wasn't the real ground,
and Michael is an honorable man.
--------------

T,
I think the problem (the one that Ted Frank was worried
about) was that the statistics you posted are confusing,
and difficult to interpret as stated.

>>
>>              _Commonwealth of Virginia  11/01/92_
>>
>>
>>Number of _AIDS_ cases in general pop:          3,310
>>Cases reported from homosexual/bi contact:         64.8%
>>Cases reported from heterosexual contact:           5.5%

So for example, if we want to know whether a given instance
of het sex is more or less likely to spread HIV than a given
instance of homo sex, we need to know the proportion of het
sex and homo sex in the population, not just the figures you give.

>>Rate of _HIV_ in general pop:                     1/250
>>Cases reported from homosexual/bi contact:         32.4%
>>Cases reported from heterosexual contact:          27.0%
>>
>>A number of things come up.  First, the _rate_ of HIV infection
>>is now higher among heterosexuals.

See, this just isn't clear from the statistics. What does
"Cases reported from homo/bi contact" mean? Have you given
the % of the total number of cases which resulted from
homo/bi contact? That's what it looks like. If so, then it
is incorrect to conclude that the rate of HIV infection is now
higher among heterosexuals.

Analogy:
Look at the number of pacifists among Quakers and among nonQuakers.
I bet there will be far more nonQuaker pacifists than Quaker
pacifists. The percentage of the total pop. of pacifists that
are Quaker will be much smaller than the percentage of the total
pop. of pacifists that are nonQuaker. But the _rate_ of pacifism
among Quakers is likely to be a whole lot higher than among
nonQuakers.
End of Analogy

Jamie
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