American Government is Shut Down!

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jakob187

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#601  Edited By jakob187

@hailinel: O___O That is...LITERALLY...what I was saying with that post. "Without personal anecdotes and links to other things and forms of reason, you cannot understand the base numbers of anything."

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Hailinel

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@jakob187 said:

@hailinel: O___O That is...LITERALLY...what I was saying with that post. "Without personal anecdotes and links to other things and forms of reason, you cannot understand the base numbers of anything."

No, personal anecdotes are not the same thing as more statistical specifics. Anecdotal evidence is "I know a guy like this." Statistical analysis is "These are the numbers behind this phenomenon that we have collected through research." Statistics don't require personal anecdotes to be effective. So long as the research and the numbers presented are sound, I don't need to cite my personal experience on, for example, a battlefield, when presenting statistics indicating the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan that were killed in action over the past ten years.

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@jakob187 said:

@hailinel: O___O That is...LITERALLY...what I was saying with that post. "Without personal anecdotes and links to other things and forms of reason, you cannot understand the base numbers of anything."

...

He mentioned that SNAP trafficking was down 75% over the last 15 years and it now down to about 1% of cases? Where is the evidence on that, and is that only for one specific state? All states in terms of overall food stamps and welfare? It's a very vague stat to throw out.

Using anecdotes to help frame statistics and letting anecdotes override statistics are two vastly different things.

Reduction in cases by 75% and now 1% of all SNAP funds (1 dollar in 100). As for that data, it comes from the CBPP which in turn cites the CBO. All other statistics can by found on the CBO as well as GAO websites.

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TruthTellah

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@dark said:

Being Australian I just have to say for the first time in a long time, I am so glad we are a part of the commonwealth. Britian has the power to just rip out the current party in power (if something like this where to occur) or we have the power of a double dissolution which forces a re-election on the spot.

From the outside looking in, I can't help but feel I am watching something massive world wide starting to unfold.

Don't worry. It's more of a localized political embarrassment than some kind of massive world wide thing. If you just go off headlines and such, it basically sounds like the end of the world, but in comparison to many political scuffles in the world, this is still rather tame. If it carries over into not raising the debt ceiling, well, it could become something much bigger, but that seems unlikely. Congress has always fought a bit before eventually coming to a debt ceiling deal; this is no different. It just happens to be occurring at the same time as a partial Federal Government cutback. Which is bad, but not as sensationally catastrophic as many seem to believe.

In times like this, it's good to remember that the US is rather different as a country, and its decentralized nature and intended points of contention and possible stalemate make it a bit hard to understand in relation to other countries with different structures. There are definite problems within the current US Congress and politics, but we still have to keep them in perspective.

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@turambar said:

@jakob187 said:

@hailinel: O___O That is...LITERALLY...what I was saying with that post. "Without personal anecdotes and links to other things and forms of reason, you cannot understand the base numbers of anything."

...

He mentioned that SNAP trafficking was down 75% over the last 15 years and it now down to about 1% of cases? Where is the evidence on that, and is that only for one specific state? All states in terms of overall food stamps and welfare? It's a very vague stat to throw out.

Using anecdotes to help frame statistics and letting anecdotes override statistics are two vastly different things.

Reduction in cases by 75% and now 1% of all SNAP funds (1 dollar in 100). As for that data, it comes from the CBPP which in turn cites the CBO. All other statistics can by found on the CBO as well as GAO websites.

CBPP's president is Bob Greenstein. He's a writer for The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-greenstein/). This guy has incentive to say that there is a reduction. I strongly question anyone armed with statistics who writes for The Huffington Post the same way I question something coming from Fox News.

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jakob187

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@hailinel said:

@jakob187 said:

@hailinel: O___O That is...LITERALLY...what I was saying with that post. "Without personal anecdotes and links to other things and forms of reason, you cannot understand the base numbers of anything."

No, personal anecdotes are not the same thing as more statistical specifics. Anecdotal evidence is "I know a guy like this." Statistical analysis is "These are the numbers behind this phenomenon that we have collected through research." Statistics don't require personal anecdotes to be effective. So long as the research and the numbers presented are sound, I don't need to cite my personal experience on, for example, a battlefield, when presenting statistics indicating the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan that were killed in action over the past ten years.

You said that statistics need context.

I said "links to other things and forms of reason."

I'm sorry that our wording on that was different. I didn't know that it was difficult to understand the similarity. That's not a smartass comment. That is me being genuine in saying "I'm sorry." It was my intended purpose within the comment. The word "context" was just escaping me at the moment.

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#607  Edited By Turambar

@maceg said:

@turambar said:

@jakob187 said:

@hailinel: O___O That is...LITERALLY...what I was saying with that post. "Without personal anecdotes and links to other things and forms of reason, you cannot understand the base numbers of anything."

...

He mentioned that SNAP trafficking was down 75% over the last 15 years and it now down to about 1% of cases? Where is the evidence on that, and is that only for one specific state? All states in terms of overall food stamps and welfare? It's a very vague stat to throw out.

Using anecdotes to help frame statistics and letting anecdotes override statistics are two vastly different things.

Reduction in cases by 75% and now 1% of all SNAP funds (1 dollar in 100). As for that data, it comes from the CBPP which in turn cites the CBO. All other statistics can by found on the CBO as well as GAO websites.

CBPP's president is Bob Greenstein. He's a writer for The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-greenstein/). This guy has incentive to say that there is a reduction. I strongly question anyone armed with statistics who writes for The Huffington Post the same way I question something coming from Fox News.

Feel free to not trust numbers cooked up by the CBPP, but the data comes from the USDA. I'd link the USDA data itself, but the current government shut down makes those inaccessible.

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#608  Edited By MacEG

@turambar: I also question the USDA. :) They published the food pyramid in the early 1980s (A Pattern for Daily Food Choices) encouraging recommending that a "healthy person" eats 8-11 servings of wheat/grains a day (The only people who did this was farmers for their cows... to fatten them up). A few years later, we have a growing obesity epidemic and they have no idea why. Fast forward to now and we have more cases of celiac, obesity and diabetes in America than ever before. (Check out "Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet: Health Implications for the 21st Century"). Am I paranoid? Maybe.

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@maceg: the 80s were 30 years ago dude. This sounds exactly like my mom won't go to a shell gas station because back in the 70's-80's she felt their gas was substandard or whatever.

Besides, what correlation is there to the data from SNAP fraud (or lack there of) and inaccurate food pyramid creation? I mean if you wanna draw a correlation to incidents of obesity among poor people than that's at least thematically solid.

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#610  Edited By Video_Game_King

The Obamacare debate in a nutshell:

I think you can figure out who's who here.
I think you can figure out who's who here.

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@animasta: People still follow the food pyramid. Companies like Monsanto were successful because the government pushed the food pyramid. Look who's on the board of Monsanto now and look and see who helped created the food pyramid. HMM. That's suspicious.

I'm also not saying a correlation exists between SNAP fraud to the food pyramid. My point is this. People use statistics from authorities that have a vested interest in making sure those statistics are true (See my Bob Greenstein comment). We should be more cautious and it's ignorant of us as a people, empowered by something as powerful and useful as the internet to go along with someone's numbers or theories just because they claim it's true or have the ability to back it up. If that's the case then we would still believe in luminiferous aether as scientific fact.

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The Obamacare debate in a nutshell:

I think you can figure out who's who here.
I think you can figure out who's who here.

What we need now is Pri-Bu to come up with a plan for Fin and Jake to execute to get out of this mess.

Wait did people actually try to connect the government shutdown to The Food Pyramid with the All Seeing (Olive) Eye at top? Is this the Illuminati at work??

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@extomar said:

@video_game_king said:

The Obamacare debate in a nutshell:

I think you can figure out who's who here.
I think you can figure out who's who here.

What we need now is Pri-Bu to come up with a plan for Fin and Jake to execute to get out of this mess.

Wait did people actually try to connect the government shutdown to The Food Pyramid with the All Seeing (Olive) Eye at top? Is this the Illuminati at work??

FOLLOW THE MONEY

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#614  Edited By Snail
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#615  Edited By MariachiMacabre

@snail said:

IT'S OVER.

For real.

And Ted Cruz was once again sealed within the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, only to be summoned when the words were spoken.

Kunda Astratta Montosse Can'Da

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@snail: so when do we start building New Detroit?