Cyclists per kilometre of road is a measure of cyclist density. To do a proper density estimate you also need to know how long (in hours) does an average cyclist spend on the road, but conceivably you can handwave it away as a near-constant. Given this, their approach is to look at the fatalities as a function of the cyclist density.
They are still missing too many variables to produce a useful estimate, but it’s not prima facie insane.
Yes it is prima facie insane, because the number of fatalities should look like f(density) times quantity of road (or quantity of cycling or something). Maybe they kinda get away with it when comparing fatalities across years, because the quantity of road doesn’t change much—but that would equally justify measuring quantity of cycling as, say, “number of cyclists divided by latitude” or “number of cyclist-kilometres times number of letters in city name”. So, good try, but I still think it’s obviously bonkers.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of PEOPLE WHO NEED THEIR HEADS EXAMINED—GJMerson.
[EDITED to add:] Anyway, unless I’m misunderstanding your “Tony Stark” comment I don’t get the impression that you really find their use of that statistic very defensible.
Should I argue with this or no? Ah, a nice Catch-22… :-)
However there wasn’t much arguing in this thread. I didn’t tell gjm that he was wrong. Instead I offered more of an alternate explanation (to the “prima facie insane” hypothesis :-D) as I am generally interested in finding alternate ways of looking at things.
Once someone was saying that “you always say I’m wrong,” and I said, “I said you were right on occasions A, B, and C,” and they responded, “See! you’re doing it again! that proves you always say I’m wrong!”
Paging Tony Stark! :-)
Cyclists per kilometre of road is a measure of cyclist density. To do a proper density estimate you also need to know how long (in hours) does an average cyclist spend on the road, but conceivably you can handwave it away as a near-constant. Given this, their approach is to look at the fatalities as a function of the cyclist density.
They are still missing too many variables to produce a useful estimate, but it’s not prima facie insane.
Yes it is prima facie insane, because the number of fatalities should look like f(density) times quantity of road (or quantity of cycling or something). Maybe they kinda get away with it when comparing fatalities across years, because the quantity of road doesn’t change much—but that would equally justify measuring quantity of cycling as, say, “number of cyclists divided by latitude” or “number of cyclist-kilometres times number of letters in city name”. So, good try, but I still think it’s obviously bonkers.
Funny how the usual roles reversed: I get charitable and you go THESE PEOPLE NEED THEIR HEAD EXAMINED :-D
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of PEOPLE WHO NEED THEIR HEADS EXAMINED—GJMerson.
[EDITED to add:] Anyway, unless I’m misunderstanding your “Tony Stark” comment I don’t get the impression that you really find their use of that statistic very defensible.
The actual explanation for this is your desire to argue with your current interlocutor, whoever that may be at the moment.
Should I argue with this or no? Ah, a nice Catch-22… :-)
However there wasn’t much arguing in this thread. I didn’t tell gjm that he was wrong. Instead I offered more of an alternate explanation (to the “prima facie insane” hypothesis :-D) as I am generally interested in finding alternate ways of looking at things.
Once someone was saying that “you always say I’m wrong,” and I said, “I said you were right on occasions A, B, and C,” and they responded, “See! you’re doing it again! that proves you always say I’m wrong!”