And the percentages are even closer, according to the annual Substance Abuse and Mental Health phone survey, if you count drug crime as blue collar crime. And that's relevant, considering how many people, especially plaid people, are in jail for drugs. A point I've belabored before.
The drug issue is relevant though, because there's a class of math problems related to it that also applies to your example: the false-positive problem. Using the same numbers, assume that your criminal justice system is 95% accurate. 20 random plaid people on the (as you've demonstrated, false) assumption that since 80% of the plaid people are criminals the liquor store was probably held up by a plaid person, odds are you're going to put at least 1 innocent person in jail.
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Date: 2006-12-11 05:25 pm (UTC)The drug issue is relevant though, because there's a class of math problems related to it that also applies to your example: the false-positive problem. Using the same numbers, assume that your criminal justice system is 95% accurate. 20 random plaid people on the (as you've demonstrated, false) assumption that since 80% of the plaid people are criminals the liquor store was probably held up by a plaid person, odds are you're going to put at least 1 innocent person in jail.