Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
How is the term median easy to manipulate?
.

You must have missed my treatise on the subject a couple of days ago. It was so long and boring it drove most of the people from the board.

To give you an idea of how reliable the term "Median" is, right now the real estate market is collapsing all across the United States. Especially here in California. Everyone in the Real Estate industry would like to keep this information away from the public. How do they do it? They keep posting articles that talk about how the "Median" price of homes in the United States (or in a certain area) is rising.

If you want to know how they manipulate the Term median (other than all the ways you stated in your post) refer to my earlier diatribe.

[Penske_Account]

In [HER] book, which hits bookstores September 19, the antiwar icon [cindy sheehan] admits she has fantasized about going back in time and killing the infant George W. Bush, thereby preventing the Iraq War.

I wonder if Gonzalez and the attorneys at Justice will do their appointed jobs and prosecute her.

I don't think RT will be able to delete her book.........

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Please explain.

http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...ian#post264800

[SlaveNoMore]

Spanky
http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...ian#post264800

shouldn't you be driving up the 280 by now?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)

*That is to say--the DFP map doesn't tell us that, so what's your point? The same one as from weeks ago, which is income disparity has increased.

ETA: For example, this, which does a much better job of making your point than the DFP (although the peak in income inequality appears to be in the last year of Clinton.)

That said, the flaw in this study is that it identifies only that the top people are making more money, not that the same people are making more money. Big difference.

The general problem with the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer theory is that it only works if the poor are actually getting poorer (not experiencing less growth than everyone else). This claim has been made as long as I can remember. People kept saying it during the Reagan years, and also during the Clinton years. In order to truely demonstrate this you would have to split the income earners into sections. Usually it is done in quintiles. And then determine what has happened to the average income in each quintile. Every time you do that, it is true that the rich are experience higher growth, but everyone of these that I have ever seen has shown growth in all five quintiles. As with the one you showed (even though it only had the top one percent and everyone else) it showed that everyone expienced growth.

It is true that the "gap" between the rich and poor is widening but that has been true every year this country has experience growth. The only time the gap doesn't widen is during a serious recession. The only time I have seen one of these quintile spreads that actually showed the poorer getting poorer was one put out by Noam Chomskey while I was getting my graduate degree in economics, but I already explained why it turned out to be bogus.

The Democrats don't use the quintile spread because it shows that even the poorest are getting wealther. The Republicans don't like to use them because they always show that the top quintile's growth is always a lot more dramatic than the lower levels.

If you truly care about the economic well being of the citizens, you should only care about what is happening to the bottom three quintiles. The bottom three should always be rising, and it is acceptible if just two are rising. But if only two are you need to fix it. But if only one of the three is rising you are in trouble.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
shouldn't you be driving up the 280 by now?

That was really mean. I left yesterday at five and met Less downtown at 6:00.

[SlaveNoMore]

Spanky
That was really mean. I left yesterday at five and met Less downtown at 6:00.

And you didn't call, why?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
In [HER] book, which hits bookstores September 19, the antiwar icon [cindy sheehan] admits she has fantasized about going back in time and killing the infant George W. Bush, thereby preventing the Iraq War.

I wonder if Gonzalez and the attorneys at Justice will do their appointed jobs and prosecute her.

I don't think RT will be able to delete her book.........

Funny. I read the statute (for the second time, as it happens, having been accused by other people with a similar lack of basic reading comprehension of violating it) and I didn't see any prohibition on fantasizing about time travel.

Where's my pudding?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
1) No, my point is that the fact that median income goes down in a state that manufactures cars, when those cars aren't being sold, doesn't tell us much about the health of the economy or the distribution of wealth. Yes, it tells us that wealth isn't being distributed to auto workers. But that's uninteresting--wealth isn't being distributed to plenty fo unemployed people.

If your measure of the health of the economy is total output, you are right. Different measures tell you different things. Saying that median income is down when the the mean is up tells you something that the mean alone does not tell you.

2) Cite please?*

*That is to say--the DFP map doesn't tell us that, so what's your point? The same one as from weeks ago, which is income disparity has increased.

I'll find a cite if you think it's not true, but it's not like this is controversial. I'm not citing that map, I'm relating something I've seen elsewhere.

And it's a different point than income disparity. I'm saying that the top 5% have benefited much more than the next 5%.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
You are not a centrist. I am.

You cannot simultaneously say that you will vote for a nutjob Republican over a moderate Democrat and pretend to be a centrist. I actually vote for Republicans from time to time. Your kind of partisanship is what's killing centrism.

I was trying to be diplomatic about it but you are just too thick to realize you are speaking out of your derriere. I know the heads of the Business lobby in this country and they are incredibly mad at the Democrats, and the Democrat leadership, for what they did over CAFTA, and they don't trust the Democrats anymore. They are penalizing the Democrats in this election for the CAFTA vote. If someone is telling you different they are either lying or don't know what they are talking about.

Since I'm not willing to disclose who my sources are here, we'll just leave it at that.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...ian#post264800

Spanky, re-read your own post if you need to, but it does not explain anywhere how the term "median" is ambiguous. You explain why medians and means diverge, and you explain why medians will change if you data sets change, but there's nothing ambiguous about the term.

Let's make this concrete. Here's a data series:

1, 2, 3, 9, 10.

What's the median? 3, right? What's ambiguous about that? The mean is 5, so the mean is greater than the median, but that's not a defect in the concept of medians, it's just a reflection that the two terms mean different things.

You seem to be especially combative about this because you think I was using median incomes to imply mean incomes were falling. But that's not what I said. I just said medians were falling.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You cannot simultaneously say that you will vote for a nutjob Republican over a moderate Democrat and pretend to be a centrist. I actually vote for Republicans from time to time. Your kind of partisanship is what's killing centrism.

I know many conservative Democrats that only vote Democrat in the general election because they place the social issues above all others. They won't vote for a legislator that will vote in a majority leader who is pro-life, no matter what the individual legislator's views. Yet they are much more centrist than you are. They just understand how the system works.

For you to talk about killing centrism, considering your placement on the political spectrum, and ideological rigidity, is really ripe. Except for maybe Tax Wonk you are the most liberal member on this board. In addition, you are what I call a reconfirming ideologue. You only read stuff that reconfirms your already preconceived notions. Anything from the left, no matter how crazy the source, or crazy the idea, you believe, where anything that promotes a conservative idea, no matter how reliable or reasonable, you discount. I can't remember you ever taking a pro administration position on anything. You say you have voted Republican, but Michael Moore has made the same claim. I can't imagine a single issue you would support a Republican on.

Sidd is a centrist Democrat. Gattigap is infinitely more centrist than you. RT is pretty liberal, but she is not a reconfirming ideologue. They are all much more qualified than you to discuss centrist Democrat thinking. I already know what your positions are before you state them. You have this attitude like your positions should be given weight because you study the issues. You don't study the issues; you just scan material to back up your agenda.

But maybe I am wrong on this; do any of the conservatives on this board think there is a less militantly partisan left wing ideologue on this board than Ty? Penske, Hank, Slave, Sgt, Bilmore?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Since I'm not willing to disclose who my sources are here, we'll just leave it at that.

You are using an anonymous source. Well there is a surprise.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Spanky, re-read your own post if you need to, but it does not explain anywhere how the term "median" is ambiguous. You explain why medians and means diverge, and you explain why medians will change if you data sets change, but there's nothing ambiguous about the term.

Let's make this concrete. Here's a data series:

1, 2, 3, 9, 10.

What's the median? 3, right? What's ambiguous about that? The mean is 5, so the mean is greater than the median, but that's not a defect in the concept of medians, it's just a reflection that the two terms mean different things.

You seem to be especially combative about this because you think I was using median incomes to imply mean incomes were falling. But that's not what I said. I just said medians were falling.

I am not being combative. Anytime I hear the term Median my radar goes up. In his september 7th column (populist myths about income equality) which is an article that some what backs up what I am saying, the minute Brooks started referring to Medians I discounted those stats as meaningless. My guess is he started referring to median incomes because the relevent facts did not back up his argument.

http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/e...oks/index.html

I don't care what the situation. If I say it once, I will say it a hundred times, your definition above is how you find the Median in basic mathematics. However, in statistics, especially in statistical analysis where you use sample groups, the median is not found using that system. The term "Median" is a much more expansive term than you seem to realize.

Statisticians pick seemingly random spots on the bell curve and call it the Median. I just don't trust it when people use the term.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
then I ended up standing next him naked one day in a locker room and he chatted me up.

NTTAWWT

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Spanky


But maybe I am wrong on this; do any of the conservatives on this board think there is a less militantly partisan left wing ideologue on this board than Ty? Penske, Hank, Slave, Sgt, Bilmore?

I certainly respect and remain in awe of the sheer volume of reconfirming ideological material that Ty reads and sources. He is also a good writer, in a mechanical/grammatical sense, albeit a tad didactic. On the positive tip, if I had to be a militantly partisan left wing ideologue, I would rather be the most militantly partisan left wing ideologue than say the penultimate most militantly partisan left wing ideologue......it's like in Sixteen Candles when Molly Ringwald tries to boost Farmer Ted's woefull state of misery at his loserdom by pointing out that at least he is the King of the Geeks......

IRL, for those who have met him, does Ty wear one of those Che Guevara berets? That is how I picture him sometimes when I read his posts.