Serial Killers and Statistics: Which Will Kill you Frist?
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
http://reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6b5zfp/til_76_of_all_known_serial_killers_in_the_20th/
What is per capita rate?
How seriously are other countries finding serial killers. Considering the population of all of Europe compared to the US how many slip through the cracks because they kill in multiple countries?
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TIL lotion ruins my tequila.
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@Karla I blame your media giving them too much attention*. We simply don't do it here, when we catch one of these it's a footnote on the newspaper.
. * based on my knowledge of US media learned on tv series
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla I blame your media giving them too much attention*. We simply don't do it here, when we catch one of these it's a footnote on the newspaper.
. * based on my knowledge of US media learned on tv series
Maybe, but it really depends on the source data.
Europe counts live births as babies that survived the first 24 hours outside the womb, that makes Europe's infant mortality rates lower than the US who counts live births as making out the womb alive.
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@Karla I can't name more than 2 SK in my country without googling
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla I can't name more than 2 SK in my country without googling
What you know off the top of your head and what you don't has little to do with the statistics. I'm sure I wouldn't recognize over 75% of the US serial killer names. Doesn't mean anything.
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@Karla it matches well enough, statistics show serial killing is an american thing
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla it matches well enough, statistics show serial killing is an american thing
Bullshit. Serial killing is a human thing. And more specifically a first world human thing.
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@Karla If it were so, we would have more of it in EU, and I don't buy your argument of it being accounted differently.
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@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
TIL lotion ruins my tequila.
It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets tequila again. Wait, no...
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla If it were so, we would have more of it in EU, and I don't buy your argument of it being accounted differently.
What EU organization looks for serial killers throughout the EU?
What safeguards are put in place to find serial killers who kill in multiple countries?
Show me the data, instead of pretending a statistic that makes you feel good has any merit.
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@Karla The data is in the link I posted. That's good enough to me.
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla The data is in the link I posted. That's good enough to me.
I looked at the link. It did not answer my questions. Many of the comments had similar questions as I did.
TIL Non-Americans are as innumerate as Americans.
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@Karla the reddit link points to a Wikipedia article
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla the reddit link points to a Wikipedia article
The majority of that Wikipedia article comes from US based law enforcement and US based researchers. A US based article is going to have majority of subjects from the US.
They cannot possibly aware of serial killers in other countries that are not recorded because of inferior law enforcement or cross country criminality.
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@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
They cannot possibly aware of serial killers in other countries that are not recorded because of inferior law enforcement or cross country criminality.
That's your opinion, I don't believe it's nowhere near enough to explain 75% of them being in the USA
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
They cannot possibly aware of serial killers in other countries that are not recorded because of inferior law enforcement or cross country criminality.
That's your opinion, I don't believe it's nowhere near enough to explain 75% of them being in the USA
Based on my questions you haven't proven that statistic to be true.
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@Karla , just walk away. It's not worth the effort winning this one. ;-)
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@Karla the cited source on wikipedia is
Michael Newton. The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Facts on File, 2006. ISBN 0816061955 p. 95
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@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla , just walk away. It's not worth the effort winning this one. ;-)
That's true for any internet argument ( or even real life ones )
I post a link I found interesting and suddenly someone is demanding proof and wants to argue it.
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@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla , just walk away. It's not worth the effort winning this one. ;-)
Yeah....
LOL I think I was fired up from my...um...interaction with Fox in the Mormon thread.
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Michael Newton. The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
So what? It is a book and anyone can publish a book on anything regardless of its truthfulness, not a study (not that all studies are good but usually better than books).
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@Karla That's the better info I have on the subject. You can accept it, ignore it or provide something better. You chose to ignore it. Any further arguing is pointless and should be moved to the garage where pointless arguments belong.
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@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I was fired up from my...um...interaction with Fox in the Mormon thread.
-gasp- nooooooooo!
quick! get her some hugs! STAT!
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla That's the better info I have on the subject. You can accept it, ignore it or provide something better. You chose to ignore it. Any further arguing is pointless and should be moved to the garage where pointless arguments belong.
The book looks like it is interesting but nowhere does it claim to be an exhaustive study of worldwide serial killers.
Provides information on hundreds of serial murder cases - from early history. This book includes major serial killers, as well as many older cases that have been solved, such as the Green River Killer, or further investigated like Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer. It covers entries and appendixes, which pair with more than 30 photographs.
So what?
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@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I was fired up from my...um...interaction with Fox in the Mormon thread.
-gasp- nooooooooo!
quick! get her some hugs! STAT!
Two predators consoling themselves after the loss of a meal?
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@Dreikin said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I was fired up from my...um...interaction with Fox in the Mormon thread.
-gasp- nooooooooo!
quick! get her some hugs! STAT!
Two predators consoling themselves after the loss of a meal?
now that you mention it it has been a while since i ate.
did you know you look almost exactly like a drumstick?
/me licks lips and starts stalking Dreikin with a predatory leer
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@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Dreikin said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I was fired up from my...um...interaction with Fox in the Mormon thread.
-gasp- nooooooooo!
quick! get her some hugs! STAT!
Two predators consoling themselves after the loss of a meal?
now that you mention it it has been a while since i ate.
did you know you look almost exactly like a drumstick?
/me licks lips and starts stalking Dreikin with a predatory leer
/me jealous you are not looking at me like a drumstick
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@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
What EU organization looks for serial killers throughout the EU?
What safeguards are put in place to find serial killers who kill in multiple countries?Europol is a thing, you know?
I don't like the undertone of the question much, but I'll choose to ignore that, since @wharrgarbl was trolling you.
And maybe this argument should be jeffed from this thread.
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@asdf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
And maybe this argument should be jeffed from this thread.
It has the smell of being something that's down to differing definitions (e.g., if the US is counting incidents where someone kills multiple people in approximately one rampage, whereas the EU requires them to be more separated in time). Either that or the general difference in likelihood of lethal crime. In either case, there's not really all that much learnt by focusing on it: incomparable definitions or some other overwhelming factor could both be contributory and make the whole point just lazy journalism.
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@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Dreikin said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I was fired up from my...um...interaction with Fox in the Mormon thread.
-gasp- nooooooooo!
quick! get her some hugs! STAT!
Two predators consoling themselves after the loss of a meal?
now that you mention it it has been a while since i ate.
did you know you look almost exactly like a drumstick?
/me licks lips and starts stalking Dreikin with a predatory leer
You're not helping your "I'm not into vore" case here.
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@anonymous234 said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Dreikin said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I was fired up from my...um...interaction with Fox in the Mormon thread.
-gasp- nooooooooo!
quick! get her some hugs! STAT!
Two predators consoling themselves after the loss of a meal?
now that you mention it it has been a while since i ate.
did you know you look almost exactly like a drumstick?
/me licks lips and starts stalking Dreikin with a predatory leer
You're not helping your "I'm not into vore" case here.
i'm not. I am into eating when i'm hungry.
it's not vore if the reason you are doing it is for calories.
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@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Dreikin said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@accalia said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I was fired up from my...um...interaction with Fox in the Mormon thread.
-gasp- nooooooooo!
quick! get her some hugs! STAT!
Two predators consoling themselves after the loss of a meal?
now that you mention it it has been a while since i ate.
did you know you look almost exactly like a drumstick?
/me licks lips and starts stalking Dreikin with a predatory leer
/me jealous you are not looking at me like a drumstick
now now, don't cry. I'll
eat you outake care of you.
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Either that or the general difference in likelihood of lethal crime. In either case, there's not really all that much learnt by focusing on it: incomparable definitions or some other overwhelming factor could both be contributory and make the whole point just lazy journalism.
Wikipedia articles are usually pretty well researched. This article was reviewed by multiple people and you can't just dismiss it with random guesses. It's like if I start reading the abstract of your papers and mock them based on shitty guesses in a subject I don't know.
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Wikipedia articles are usually pretty well researched.
Wikipedia also has a serious issue with vandalism and disreputable sources.
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Wikipedia articles are usually pretty well researched.[Citation needed]
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Either that or the general difference in likelihood of lethal crime. In either case, there's not really all that much learnt by focusing on it: incomparable definitions or some other overwhelming factor could both be contributory and make the whole point just lazy journalism.
Wikipedia articles are usually pretty well researched.
Wikipedia articles are not (supposed to be) original research, instead they give content with references to elsewhere.
This article was reviewed by multiple people and you can't just dismiss it with random guesses. It's like if I start reading the abstract of your papers and mock them based on shitty guesses in a subject I don't know.
Nothing says the article cannot be incomplete or one-sided, with multiple reviewers there is just less chance that what is listed is incorrect.
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Wikipedia articles are usually pretty well researched.
Stuff like differences in definitions can get through easily though, and is pretty difficult for amateur editors to pick up on. The issue is that you have to know about what people are really saying in several parts of the world to understand if it is actually an issue that is biting or not. It's the sort of thing that academics in the relevant subject area are supposed to be sensitive to, and is where specialist training helps a lot. OTOH, there are also fields where specialists tend to have hobby-horses (politically motivated or otherwise) so there's a need to be really careful.
Until you can verify that definitions are the same, that data collection practices are comparable, and that you've not got major confounding factors, you need to be very careful when claiming that different parts of the world are fundamentally unalike in some specific way. (There's a lot more murders in NYC than in backwoods Alaska, but that's just because one is a big city and the other is an ass load of nothing with a side order of bears and mosquitos.)
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@dkf
But there is no big city in Alaska
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Until you can verify that definitions are the same, that data collection practices are comparable, and that you've not got major confounding factors, you need to be very careful when claiming that different parts of the world are fundamentally unalike in some specific way.
That's bullshit when the difference is so large and evident
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OBS: Put one more for Canada, it's not accounting for @lorne-kates
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@wharrgarbl said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
That's bullshit when the difference is so large and evident
Well, you're right on one thing: the word “bullshit” does need to be involved. You've got to allow for whether the definitions changed, what the data collecting practices were (e.g., if the country didn't make any effort to connect murders they might think that they were unrelated), and what the differences in populations were (which accounts for a lot of difference between the US and the UK). As it is, you've got data but you've not got results.
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
if the country didn't make any effort to connect murders they might think that they were unrelated
you mean all the other countries in the world, right...
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@wharrgarbl Just looking at the top two numbers on that table -- US and England -- yeah, the difference looks huge, but you have to consider that the population of the US is way, way larger than the population of England. So naturally you'd expect there to be way more serial killers in the US if you don't adjust for population.
If you adjust for population of the US vs. England, the US has produced serial killers at a rate of about 8.53 per million inhabitants, and England at a rate of 2.74 per million. So the US produced them at a rate that's only 3.12x higher than England... I'm willing to credit most of that discrepancy to differences in how the killings are classified, reported, investigated, etc.
Here's the table adjusted for population, based on the current population estimates that I was able to find: (I'm assuming that "England" refers to England, not the whole U.K.)
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@anotherusername that maybe part of this, but I'm not dismissing the attention your media give to those criminals as a factor
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@wharrgarbl I sincerely doubt that many serial killers become serial killers just because they want the notoriety, and the media gives them the attention. It is far more likely that our criminal system does a better job of correlating patterns between separate murders, which leads them to trace them to the same individual; other countries might eventually catch the perpetrator for one of his murders without ever discovering that he's responsible for others. Also the U.S. probably keeps better statistics and records.
Note that "serial killer" is defined as someone who kills repeatedly, but spread out over some considerable length of time. Otherwise, it's considered a mass killing; e.g. James Holmes does not qualify as a serial killer because he killed a bunch of people in one shooting; that's a mass killing, not a serial killing, if we're using the correct definitions.
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@anotherusername he is more like a parallel killer
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@Karla there's a reason that thread is one of like 2 on mute for me. I learned the futility of arguing with fox a while ago.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Karla there's a reason that thread is one of like 2 on mute for me. I learned the futility of arguing with fox a while ago.
arguing with either of the vixens on the other hand is usually worth the time, even if it's only because they're so distractable that you can win by tossing a
vibratorchicken out for them so they lose the thread of the argument.
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@Perverted_Vixen said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
so they lose the thread of the argument.
Some might say that you are quite ... uh, skilled(?) ... at losing your threads.