Timeline for Does America not lead the world in mass shootings?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
21 events
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| Nov 28, 2022 at 13:50 | comment | added | gnasher729 | The problem with small and big countries could be solved by publishing the same statistics for all 50 US states individually. | |
| Jun 17, 2020 at 9:41 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Oct 9, 2018 at 2:02 | history | edited | Cees Timmerman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added some stats for Europe as requested in the comments
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| Oct 8, 2018 at 18:48 | comment | added | Acccumulation | Snopes doesn't use the term "cherry picking". "Cherry picking" is when you choose only the data that supports your position, not when you choose a statistic that supports your position. And the idea that the median is a better measure is absurd. Choosing the median to measure a skewed-right distribution is going to make smaller countries look better. When you add up all countries in Europe, and then take the median, it's much less favorable to Europe. | |
| Oct 8, 2018 at 13:26 | comment | added | Oleg Lobachev | Nice analysis. As The Onion put it: "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens". | |
| Oct 7, 2018 at 14:31 | comment | added | D M | There's a valid point about excluding countries with no mass shootings, although the small sample size argument works both ways; of course most small countries won't have mass shootings. Relatedly, it's kind of silly to take the median of mass shootings in smaller countries on a year by year basis; if a particular country had 3 mass shootings in 2015, 1 in 2013, and 2 in 2010, that would be a rather large number of shootings for a country of 5 million, yet the median would still be 0. Trading one dubious statistical analysis for another doesn't help get to the truth. | |
| Oct 4, 2018 at 21:31 | comment | added | Sam OT | BREAKING NEWS: UK is second on the median list behind only the US!! Balkan states [that we hate because we're a racist/nationalist/DailyMail newspaper] included in this list! \\ not exactly the point, but related: "headline data", even if technically correct, isn't sufficient by itself; just saying "US doesn't lead mass shootings" isn't enough to make any conclusions, without looking at what the data is (are), and what definitions they're using | |
| Oct 4, 2018 at 16:41 | history | edited | Cees Timmerman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added more examples as requested in the comments
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| Oct 4, 2018 at 16:16 | comment | added | Cees Timmerman | As stated in the article, answer, and comments, "The second striking thing about the list of mass shootings in Europe is that it is dominated by outliers." - In Norway's case, the terrorist acts of a single Nazi. | |
| Oct 4, 2018 at 6:49 | comment | added | prosfilaes | @J.Chang It does not say that. The average Norwegian in 2011 was more likely to be the victim of a mass shooting. The probability of a Norwegian alive now becoming a victim of a mass shooting is arguably less; at the very least, the small sample size tells us little about the future. | |
| Oct 3, 2018 at 18:41 | comment | added | LarsH | @JollyJoker There are two separate but related issues here... (1) the report omitting countries where no mass shootings occurred in the data set, and (2) the report omitting time periods where no mass shootings occurred in the countries that were mentioned in the report. Cees quoted Snopes about (1), but (1) is irrelevant to the OP's question because it doesn't affect the order of countries. I thought you were making a point about Cees' answer (1), but apparently you meant (2), which this answer doesn't directly mention. | |
| Oct 3, 2018 at 18:00 | comment | added | user18829 | Why does Norway have such a high (1.99) value in "Average (mean) annual mass shootings"? | |
| Oct 3, 2018 at 11:51 | comment | added | Eric Nolan | In light of this it would be interesting to see what happens if were to either include all of Europe together (presumably the metric would drop by a lot) or you broke the US down by state (presumably resulting in a finding that X, Y or Z state are mass shooting hot spots). | |
| Oct 3, 2018 at 7:53 | comment | added | JollyJoker | @LarsH There are few deaths from mass shootings per year over large areas and long times. The shortish time window and small countries included means those countries that happened to have a mass shooting have a misleadingly high average, since including areas and times when no shootings happened would lower the average. | |
| Oct 3, 2018 at 5:22 | comment | added | Glen_b | There's a closely related effect to the one discussed here, well known to statisticians, which is that small counties/states/countries have larger variability in rates than large ones (a kind of 'small county' effect). Consequently any list of rates like this will almost always be topped by small countries -- but with something like the rates under discussion, it will typically be different small countries in different years (it might be Norway for one period and Serbia for the next period, as one or two events bumps countries up the list and 0 events drops them back out again). | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 17:58 | comment | added | LarsH | @JollyJoker How is that point relevant? The OP's question was about the ranking of the US as higher or lower relative to other countries with mass shootings (specifically Norway, Finland and Switzerland). Inclusion of countries with zero mass shootings would not change this ordering. The question was not about how much rain there is, but about which days had more rain than others. | |
| Oct 2, 2018 at 17:51 | comment | added | user4951 | I think average is what counts more than median. The probability is small. It doesn't change the fact that you are more likely to be victim of mass shooting in Norway than in US. It's not misleading at all. It just shows that mass shooting in US is overrated | |
| Oct 1, 2018 at 10:52 | comment | added | ANeves | Russia seems very safe. | |
| Sep 28, 2018 at 8:40 | comment | added | JollyJoker | The point about leaving out zeroes is a very good one. You get a skewed view of how much rain there is if you leave out days with no rain. | |
| Sep 27, 2018 at 23:24 | history | edited | Cees Timmerman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 878 characters in body
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| Sep 27, 2018 at 23:15 | history | answered | Cees Timmerman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |