Lies, Damned Lies, and Gateway Pundit's use of statistics

[babylonsister]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/200911110038

Lies, Damned Lies, and Gateway Pundit's use of statistics

November 11, 2009 5:31 pm ET by Jamison Foser


The right-wing blog Gateway Pundit says Christians are the target of more hate crimes in the U.S. than Muslims:

In the real world... Hate crimes against Muslims have steadily declined since 2001. Today there are more reported hate crimes against Christians in the United States than Muslims.

That's a reference to the fact that there were 115 reported hate crime incidents against Muslims in 2007, according to the FBI, and 118 against Christians.

Now, this would be a good time to keep in mind that 78 percent of American adults are Christian, and 0.6 percent are Muslim. In other words, there are about 130 times as many Christians in the US as there are Muslims. And yet there were essentially the same number of reported hate crimes against Muslims as against Christians in 2007.

That sure paints a different picture than Gateway Pundit's statement that "there are more reported hate crimes against Christians in the United States than Muslims," doesn't it? <[br />
In an effort to downplay hate crimes against Muslims, Gateway Pundit has accidentally provided a reminder of just how disproportionately Muslims are the victims of such crimes. Heckuva job, GP.

[MindandSoul]

1. You are absolutely right!

Thank you for pointing out those statistical inconsistencies!
Unfortunately, too many people are not even aware of what statistics really means! They actually think that if they buy the same loto ticket every week for 20 years, they have a better chance to win!. .
No one ever told them about the"non-compounding" effect!

[NYC_SKP]

2. Muslims are more than 130 times more likely to be a victim of a hate crime incident.

What's more, they even mistated their own tables from the research; in raw numbers there were slightly more incidents against Muslims than the combined Catholic + Protestant number.

There's interesting commentary in the Gateway Pundit article:

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/11/us-hate-crimes-against-muslims-continue-to-decline-more-hate-crimes-against-christians/

K and R.