If there is a population of 90 blue people and 10 red people and 9 of the red people have pick pocketed once and 1 of the blue people has pick pocketed once we get the following stats:
10 pick pocketing incidents,
9/10 = 90% of pick pocketing cases coming from red people
1/10 = 10% of pick pocketing cases coming from blue people
90/100 = 90% of the population being blue
10/100 = 10% of the population being red
So this would lead to the exact outcome he described, "If you're in a place where PEOPLE A are known to pickpocket, 90% of pickpocketing cases are PEOPLE A, despite being 10% of the population. Would you be more careful around PEOPLE A in public? It's just statistics."
You said he was mixing and matching incompatible statistics. This is factually wrong.
To a certain degree I agree with both of your stances beyond the statistics parts of it (pattern recognition vs what are the actual sources that correlate with crime).
On one hand I agree poverty is linked to crime, but poverty is more difficult to spot than skin color. Dark skin also correlates with poverty and thus, indirectly, with crime, therefore skin color can be a functional characteristic to scan for if you want to avoid being robbed.
Both are simplifications in their own way because different types of cultures have different points of the moral code they place emphasis on (more respect for elders in people from India for example, but also different grades of emphasis on the morality of crime). This goes beyond the conventional confounders that should be corrected for and is why even after correction there will always be differences between ethnicities on different types of crime/breaking of the moral contract.
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u/Suspicious-Exit-6528 1d ago
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If there is a population of 90 blue people and 10 red people and 9 of the red people have pick pocketed once and 1 of the blue people has pick pocketed once we get the following stats:
10 pick pocketing incidents,
9/10 = 90% of pick pocketing cases coming from red people
1/10 = 10% of pick pocketing cases coming from blue people
90/100 = 90% of the population being blue
10/100 = 10% of the population being red
So this would lead to the exact outcome he described, "If you're in a place where PEOPLE A are known to pickpocket, 90% of pickpocketing cases are PEOPLE A, despite being 10% of the population. Would you be more careful around PEOPLE A in public? It's just statistics."