At 12:55 PM -0400 6/20/00, dennis roberts wrote:
>At 11:10 AM 6/20/00 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>Then I also have a rule of thumb question. At what point is a rate
>>considered unreliable or a useless piece of information? My example again
>>and remember that it uses the "formula" I first presented above. The
>>previous reports show rates of .44 per 100 or .08 per 100, etc. Of course I
>>find this comical because I imagine that .44 means an escapee with only a
>>torso, legs and head and .08 as an escapee with only the torso! But, many
>>folks around here take those numbers to indicate that the escape "rate" has
>>decreased substantially! I have seen CDC tables with a caveat regarding
>>small rates and will pull those as evidence for my argument.
>
>
>well, just like the mean on a 50 item test might be 29.84 ... which no
>person could actually obtain AS a score ... you have to take summary values
>like these with a grain of salt ... for reporting purposes ... it would
>seem to me to make more sense to say ... 30 items ...
>
>for escapee rates ... in either the case of .44 per 100 or .08 per 100 ...
>you don't want to round to 0 ... and report that since ... it suggest NO
>escapees ... but, saying about 1 per 100 seems not correct either ...
>though, i would prefer saying "about 1" to saying .44 or .08 ... 1 gives a
>more UNDERstandable idea of what is happening ...
Reword these as per 10,000? That way you have "whole people" while
preserving the differences among the rates.
Disclaimer: I am in NO WAY an expert.
________________________________
Jill Binker
Fathom Dynamic Statistics Software
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Key Curriculum Press
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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