Originally Posted by SirFlysALot
Lets do the math. Lets say 5 million Muslims in the US. 25 have actually caused an attack on US soil.
25 / 5,000,000 = .000005 chance of a particular Muslim in the US of being a terrorist. If you figure of these 25, they are either all dead or in custody, you should not lose any sleep over night because of this.
Any statistician would laugh at that as any sort of predictor of behavior. That third grade math sure comes in handy.
You're missing the point entirely. The reasoning for profiling isn't based solely on the raw statistical probability they will be a threat. Were that the criteria, why would we need security screening AT ALL. The criteria for profiling is based on what group is MORE LIKELY to be a threat, and what group is LESS LIKELY.
Lets do the math. Lets say 5 million Muslims in the US. out of a general population of 300,000,000, 25 MUSLIMS, have actually caused an attack on US soil.
25 / 5,000,000 = .000005 chance of a particular Muslim in the US of being a terrorist. In contrast, using those numbers, out of the general population there's a .000000833 chance they ANYONE will be a terrorist. That means by your numbers, that a Muslim has a greater chance of being a terrorist than the general population by a margin of
60 to 1.
Any statistician would laugh at NOT considering those odds in any life or death situation, and NOT doing something to mitigate those odds.
Yes, that third grade math sure comes in handy. But statistical analysis IS NOT third grade math. It's more than crunching raw numbers to get the result YOU WANT TO SEE.