Wednesday, July 26, 2006 |
13:46 - Doom! Dooooooom!
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At the Japanese restaurant where we all just had lunch, there was a laminated sheet of paper sitting on the table warning customers direly that CAR BURGLARIES ARE ON THE RISE IN CUPERTINO.
I don't have the sheet in front of me (they took it away when the food came), but here's the gist:
In 2004 thus far [April], there have been 74 car burglaries in Cupertino. This number does not count thefts from cars that were unlocked. Cars have been broken into for cellphone charging cords, children's backpacks, even the change in the center console.
In 2001, there were 281 car burglaries, which remains the high for the five-year period.
There was a lot more to these paragraphs, including a few more, but these are the parts that stuck in my mind. It should be fairly clear why:
If the five-year high for car burglaries was 2001, and the rate partially through 2004 (when the paper was published, apparently) was 74, then how on earth are car burglaries rising?
If I'm reading this sheet right, the numbers would have had to go from 281 in 2001 down to idlyllic, pastoral levels in 2002 and 2003 for a figure of 74 partially through 2004 to register as a "rise" in any meaningful way.
Pardon my cynicism, but it seems to me that whoever put together this little sheet either took some piece of boilerplate from an earlier, more lawless time and just plugged in updated numbers; or else has some kind of heretofore unclear nefarious purpose in making people more paranoid about getting their cars broken into, and knew that even the true statistics look scary even if they're really not, as long as you frame them deftly. Because if you're just skimming over this paper, you wouldn't necessarily think too hard about those numbers and years and what they mean—all that is likely to register in your head is "Car burglaries on the rise.... highest in five years... lots of break-ins so far this year already... crooks lurking around every corner just waiting for their chance to swipe my iPod and stereo faceplate". But if you look at the numbers more carefully, and extrapolate the figure of 74 in April to a yearlong figure of 222, it looks a lot more like the figures are flattish and decreasing nicely.
I don't know who's in charge of the fear industry, but I'd like to buy stock.
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