it defies me how "clustering" can bring more accurate information compared to a geographically completely spread sample. to me this should lead to loss of accurracy. that this is not the case ,seems one of the big points in the Lancets small sample sized study. they refer to previous done bio statistics where it seems to work well. but how can bio statistics be compared or related to political/social sensi, and to the case of victimisation in families ? to go and ask anxious families if and how family members died, during instable times, is a political sensus. Remember opinion polling is something Iraqis have not seen in 3 generations.
the snobs dont get it in this above discussion, I think.

It does not, however, mean, as some commentators have argued in response to this study, that figures of 8,000 or 194,000 are as likely as one of 98,000. Quite the contrary. The farther one goes from 98,000, the less likely the figure is.

I would like to ask you this, as a novice statics person.

Couldn’t one also say that the closer one gets to 98,000 the lower the confidence you have. Everyone uses 95%, but what if the calculation was for 50%. I didn’t take the time to look up the sample size, or the standard deviation or standard error, but I do know that as you lower the confidence you tighten the band.

1) The conclusion. A 95% confidence interval of 8000-194000? Are you joking? What does that tell us that’s useful? Nothing.

2) The prewar estimates. Contradicted by UN estimates.

3) The authors. They make no pretense of objectivity. They only agreed to do the study if it could be publshed before the elections, so it could help defeat Bush.

4) Common sense. If 185 more people died every day, where are the headlines? We get a bulletin every time an Iraqi stubs his toe, along with 20 editorials claiming it proves the war was wrong. It’s not reasonable to suggest hundreds of massacres have gone unreported.

I could go on.

Does that go for your post on Clark County, Ohio, too?

The claim that peaceful areas have been intentionally taken out of the sample is ridiculous; Najaf governorate was grouped with Karbala and Qadisayah was grouped with Dhi Quar. This meant that two of the most violent cities in Iraq (Najaf and Samarra) had no sampling at all, and the governorate containing Samarra was grouped with a largely Shi’ite province.

The conceptual questions you have raised are indeed clear, in as much as it is clear that you are talking rubbish. I still refuse to discuss specifics with you until you apologise for trying to bullshit me about the R^2 ratio, however. Since you have apparently admitted the survey’s main conclusion (you have admitted that the leading cause of death in Iraq is violence; since violence was not the leaeding cause of death in Iraq before the invasion, you must therefore admit that the death rate has gone up), however, this discussion would seem rather pointless, unless you are deriving masochistic pleasure from it.

It is appropriate to raise one’s nose in the air, by the way, when someone you are talking to has a visible and spreading brown stain on his trousers.

This study did not include even a single cluster from Basrah province, containing Iraq’s second-largest city, and which has been the calmest area of the entire country. Yet "There is no realistic way in which a critique of this sort [bias] can get off the ground". Supposedly these clusters were chosen randomly, yet the largest, calmest region in the nation has mysteriously been bypassed entirely, in favor of a generous distribution across the Sunni Triangle. Hmmm….ya think that might scue the results of an extrapolation slightly? Error magnification, anyone?

Ultimately, as I said before, I could care less. The headline value of this "study" tanked, once most reasonable people realized that the headline was meaningless, and what should really have been taken from it is that violence is the leading cause of death in Iraq. Wow, my seven-year old could have told you that, and much cheaper to boot.

This analysis was not a regression, therefore there was no regression sum of squares and no residual sum of squares, therefore talk about R^2 is meaningless. In any case, a large R^2 is generally a good thing, not a bad one. You are also using the phrases "non-random" and "heterogeneous" in the same way.

You’ve done the statistical debate equivalent of soiling yourself in public now; you really can’t expect to be taken seriously on this subject again.

If you’ll read my article (unlikely; you didn’t read the Lancet article or Chris’s, so why should I be special), you’ll see that my definition of "hack" revolves round people questioning the honesty of the researchers _without_having_any_basis_for_doing_so_ . If the cap fits, and it does, wear it.

I wll also add six "hack points", on a scale to be determined later, for claiming to have "run rings around" arguments that you didn’t understand at all.

I will respond to your other points as and when (and only when) you can find someone else to make them; someone who has not embarrassed themselves in my eyes by pretending to talk knowledgably about the R^2 ratio for something that was not a regression. I apologise if this appears high-handed, but I simply cannot allow this kind of behaviour to go unremarked.