On 6/23/2011 8:54, Invisible wrote:
> On 23/06/2011 04:36 PM, Warp wrote:
>> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Apparently a 2008 estimate suggests that 11.15 million murders are
>>> committed per year in the USA. (Emphasis *estimate*.)
>>
>> I would like to see some credible references to that. 11 million people
>> is like nuking New York and a good chunk of its surroundings (New York
>> has a population of something like 8 million). Each year.
>
> My source is here:
>
> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=murder

11.5 million is the number of crimes committed, where "crime" means 
"something for which you can go to jail." So that includes stealing a car, 
holding up a store, etc.

Total crimes is 3667/100K/year, actual crimes of intentionally killing 
someone is 5.4/100K/year, so you're off by about 3 orders of magnitude there.

> No indication of where *their* source is, nor what the confidence intervals
> on that figure is.

My guess would be the UCR part 1.  UCR is the FBI's Unified Crime Reports.

> is the number of *crimes*, not actually the number of people murdered. (I'm
> not sure how these relate; is killing 7 people counted as 1 crime or 7
> crimes?

It would be seven, because you can be guilty of killing one of them and not 
the other, so the prosecutors always charge you with seven "counts" of murder.

> Can killing a single person be several crimes at once?)

Yes.  Murder, assault with a deadly weapon, breaking and entering, etc.

> I agree though, it does sound a tad large just for the USA...

You're counting "all crimes" and think it means "murder".

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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