"Crime study: Handguns, not 'assault rifles,' used in most mass shootings"

[sfzombie13 324]

enlighten me then

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[Southern_Man 0]

sfzombie13

enlighten me then

It is based on a household survey: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[sfzombie13 324]

thanx for the link, very informative. every time i have heard the unemployment rate mentioned anywhere on the news, it was always in relation to the number of claims filed. i thought it was what it was based on. i do have one more question, forgive my lack of understanding. where do they get the information? i have never heard of anyone being asked to provide that information to anyone. i have a lot of friends also who have never been asked any of these types of questions. do they just estimate the numbers? because it is not working like the link says it should, i can tell you that for a fact. not trolling, just trying to understand where the numbers come from. sounds to me like an estimate, not really accurate at all.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[Southern_Man 0]

sfzombie13

thanx for the link, very informative. every time i have heard the unemployment rate mentioned anywhere on the news, it was always in relation to the number of claims filed. i thought it was what it was based on. i do have one more question, forgive my lack of understanding. where do they get the information? i have never heard of anyone being asked to provide that information to anyone. i have a lot of friends also who have never been asked any of these types of questions. do they just estimate the numbers? because it is not working like the link says it should, i can tell you that for a fact. not trolling, just trying to understand where the numbers come from. sounds to me like an estimate, not really accurate at all.

They actually pretty extensively cover the methodology at that link. It is a household survey. Census takers do a survey of, I believe ~60,000 households a month. It says they take steps to insure that is a representative sample and statistically that is quite a large sample so if the sample is good than then the results should have a high degree of confidence. Without being a professional in polling or statistics that is about all I can conclude by just looking at what they publish.

The number of unemployment claims filed is a different indicator that is, of course, also frequently reported. I believe it is calculated directly by reports of claims filed.

The labor force participation rate is another indicator of the health of the labor market.

All these are important indicators but it important to understand just what is being measured and how.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[sfzombie13 324]

thanx again. i missed that part. now, having a very good understanding of how they get the numbers, i can say 100% that the number is inaccurate. i don't care what kind of statistical sample they use or the math they use to extrapolate the data, it will never be right. i can see that there is no other practical way to get the number, but they need to ensure that when they use this number, they put the margin of error along with the data. it could be far more than anyone knows, depending on who they contact.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[Southern_Man 0]

sfzombie13

thanx again. i missed that part. now, having a very good understanding of how they get the numbers, i can say 100% that the number is inaccurate. i don't care what kind of statistical sample they use or the math they use to extrapolate the data, it will never be right. i can see that there is no other practical way to get the number, but they need to ensure that when they use this number, they put the margin of error along with the data. it could be far more than anyone knows, depending on who they contact.

Well, you caused me to look into it a little more. In addition to the household survey there is also an establishment survey every month (establishment=business). BLS says the establishment survey has a smaller margin or error than the household survey. There are a lot of technical notes and it takes a little digging just to find out what the margin of error is. Here's what they say:
At an unemployment rate of around 6.0 percent, the 90-percent confidence interval for the monthly change in unemployment as measured by the household survey is
about +/- 300,000, and for the monthly change in the unemployment rate it is about +/- 0.2 percentage point


Complete counts (were they practically feasible) are also not 100% accurate. You just introduce different sources of error. I am always in favor of disclosing more, rather than less information so I also wish they disclosed the margin or error, but for all I know it is on the bottom of every release the BLS sends out but doesn't get reported. It would not change (much, maybe fractionally) from month to month.

Anyway, I think either survey would be far more representative than just adding up the number of unemployment claims.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[sfzombie13 324]

as you said, it's better than just reporting the people receiving benefits, as i thought before. thanx for enlightening me, i seriously doubt that i would have bothered to research it had you not posted that link. i love being better informed on any subject. now, if we could get the govt. to do something about the water poisoning here. but the coal industry controls all the politicians as well as most of the people.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes