• Nate Cox@programming.dev
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    1 day ago

    I loathe and despise using percentages like this.

    500% sounds super scary, but is meaningless without providing the baseline. If there was only one instance before and now there’s 5 it isn’t a significant increase but 500% sure sounds scary.

    • tabular@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Worse still it’s not even clear what is being discussed. It implied “violence” but that is a wide range from just pushing to serious shooting.

      % can also be misleading when a scale is arbitrary. A temperature increase measured in Fahrenheit will be a rather different % when converted to Kelvin.

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        6 hours ago

        We all know that cops will try to charge you with assaulting them if you so much as shrug while being arrested. And they’ll contrive situations just so they can do that. I’d say that makes their statistics meaningless without specific details and proof.

      • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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        7 hours ago

        ICE also keep getting caught on camera lying about being threatened before they start beating some innocent