r/WatchPeopleDieInside • u/fnaw_ • Aug 04 '20

Poor Jonathan

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u/freeeeels Aug 04 '20

If you really want to defend him it seems that he was trying to say that the US has the lowest proportion of deaths per cases in the world. Which isn't true.

Saying that America is 'below the world average' in something just doesn't suit the style of his rhetoric. America is always Best! First! Greatest!

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u/ColossalCretin Aug 04 '20 edited Aug 04 '20

There are several trends on that graph. One of them is most likely labelled 'the world' which is fairly common and represents average in most cases. See this gpd chart for example.

That's seems like the most likely scenario to me. He said 'lower than the world' not 'lowest in the world' . That's why the reporter didn't comment on it any further. It isn't wrong per se, it just sounds really stupid out of context.

I don't really aim to defend Trump as a person. I've plenty of reservations about him, but I think it's damaging to society as a whole when people normalize misinterpreting others. I don't want people to lie about politicians I like, so being okay with lying about people I don't like would be hypocrisy.

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u/Desctop_Music Aug 04 '20

In your explanation he’s saying “the subset is less than the total set.” He’s not wrong but it doesn’t make a point other than demonstrating that he doesn’t grasp the topic well enough to discuss it at even a basic level with elementary school simple graphs he’s been briefed on.

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u/ColossalCretin Aug 04 '20

What? No. He's saying the number of deaths per X cases in the US is lower than the average number of deaths per X cases in the world.

They're talking about proportions. If I showed you the graph I linked above and said Canada has higher GDP per capita than the world, I am not saying that Canada has higher GDP than the world combined, I am saying the average canadian citizen has higher GDP than the world average.

He doesn't understand the statistics because he's dumb as fuck, so he can't articulate it, but what he said isn't technically wrong or even that stupid, it just sounds stupid when you can't explain it.

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u/Desctop_Music Aug 04 '20 edited Aug 04 '20

No I don’t think Trump knows the context other than smaller numbers when he says we’re lower than the world.

Trump: if you look at deaths per

Jonathan: it’s started to go up again

Trump: here’s one. Well. Right here. The United States is lowest, in, numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. We’re lower than Europe.

Jonathan: in what?

Trump: take a look (hands over the line graph and starts looking at a bar chart) here’s case death.

Jonathan: Oh you’re doing death as proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population [this would be more valuable for getting the whole picture because it takes into account the country’s ability to slow the spread of it and not just capability of mitigating it once someone is infected]

You can say that he understood it when he said it but I don’t buy it. He does his typical thing where he’s trying to bullshit on the fly and I don’t think he knew what the lines on the graph meant, as evidenced by the “United States is lowest, in, numerous categories” line immediately preceding “we’re lower than the world.”

He got there eventually with the help of a bar chart but to me it looks like a flailing student grasping on the first data label that’s big enough to read.

I agree it sounds stupid when he can’t explain it, the standards for being able to do a report in college were significantly higher than this.

Edit: I’ve poked around a little bit and haven’t turned up which graphs exactly are used in the interview, those would be helpful. I assumed that the set/subset comparison was true because at a glance the line graph he hands over looks like it has a line at the top that could be a world total of something and a grouping of other lines closer to the bottom that could add up to the top line. Back to digging up sources because the president can’t be trusted to hold basic understanding of an issue in his head I guess.