Have Barack Obama and Eric Holder Caused an Increase in Mass Murder?

**Philbert** · October 22nd, 2013, 09:56 AM

Originally Posted by Pilot321

Don't want to speak for someone else, but I took it to mean statisically significant, often + or - 5% margin of error, so 12 out of 315M would be insignificant in an analysis.

I don't know if there has been a statistically significant increase in mass shootings lately, but it's not correct to dismiss the possibility just because 12 is a small number.

Nothing is statistically significant by itself, only in comparison to another hypothesis. For example, if you looked at past records and made a model of how many mass shootings there are per year, you can test the likelihood of seeing 12 or more such incidents under that same model. If the number of mass shootings per year is governed by a normal distribution (bell curve) with mean 5 and standard deviation 1, then seeing 12 would be pretty unlikely.

But whenever someone says X is or is not statistically significant, they always have to tell you: compared to what?

**Pilot321** · October 22nd, 2013, 10:01 AM

^^^^^Totally agree from an analytical perspective. Just putting it in context. The dangers of being victim of a "mass shooting" compared to other dangers like highway accidents or even home accidents IS statistically insignificant. The number of mass shooting this year versus last year may be statistically significant.

**Philbert** · October 22nd, 2013, 10:04 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...g-more-common/

Some charts on the incidence of mass shootings here. Doesn't look like much evidence of an increase.

**Yellowfin** · October 22nd, 2013, 10:10 AM

OK, so we've identified the problem with Holder and the O-hole, that they'll lie, cheat, mislead, etc. So what are we going to do about it?

**BSH** · October 27th, 2013, 08:30 PM

The obvious question somebody needs to ask Holder & Obama is, why do Democratic administrations cause more mass shootings?

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