The Danger of Precision

Don't ask me why, but I've just sat through one of Michelle Malkin's amateur news casts (and I use the term amateur in its most commonly accepted sense, not the recent warm-fuzzy sense). She goes on and on about one of her favourite topics: racial profiling is good. The point she attempts to make is that we should all be suspicious of young Muslim males because they are the root of all terrorist activity. Her strategy to do this is to parade a series of terrorist activities before the viewer and point out that they have been enacted by young Muslim males.

Her statements may be precise, but as she makes no attempt to look at the population of terrorist activities or the distribution of ethnicity, gender and age of the suspects, they are meaningless.

Let's imagine that there are 100 terrorist plots. 90 of them by old ladies from Skye and 10 of them by YMM. I could certainly say: look here are 10 plots, all of them by YMM - viewer beware! However, I'd be far more efficient in nailing terrorists if I zipped up to Skye and interviewed all the grannies.

In general, when 'facts' are presented through channels like this, one doesn't have much real hope of finding out if they are true or not. However, one can always inspect the form of the statements and the context in which they are presented and determine if one is being presented with some precise, but highly biased, (potential) information.

(Of course, Islam isn't a race but a religion.)

Comments

[Jeff Medcalf]

True as far as it goes. I'd like to see some examples of terror plots by grannies from Skye, though. As far as I can tell, the terrorist attacks that most concern us, the possible targets (that is, mass casualty attacks against civilians), are almost entirely committed by young Muslim men. Of all terror attacks against civilians, it would appear that the overwhelming majority since the mid 1980s have been committed by Muslims. (And if you eliminate separatist movements like the IRA and the Basque and the Tamil Tigers, we're back up to virtually all remaining attacks being committed by Muslims.)

So, yes, profiling can be a very good thing. (Though in this case, it's not racial profiling, but religious or, better yet, ideological profiling: Islam is not a race; Islamism is not a religion, but Islamists are Muslims.) It is, as you might say, efficient, because we do know the community from which these attacks generally come. While Malkin is not presenting a scientifically supported case, and anecdotal evidence must be examined carefully because it can be misleading, I cannot comprehend a situation where a scientifically-supported case would find anything other than what Malkin is alluding to.

[Matthew Hurst]

Jeff,

Your points are fair and rational. The post was intentially overly abstract. However, the point I wanted to make was:

We live in an information age. Unfortunately, the average consumer of mass media (and other ramblings) doesn't pay much attention to the validity of the information broadcast. In addition, I don't believe that those who are intentially biasing and manipulating their presentation of information actually know how they are doing this. In a case like Malkin's the viewer doesn't actually know what part of the argument they need to take on trust as that part is invisible (the recall part - the part about the grannies from Skye).

[Dr. Leslie Brown]

Well all scientists get taught the difference between accuracy & precision. They're not the same thing, and its dangerous to assume they are. Accuracy is hit the bullseye of a target. Precision means to hit the same spot repeadetly (even if its off the board). We aim for both precision & accuracy in our measurements.