but some statements made me feel a bit uncomfortable, and even though your point was about statistics, you’re dealing with a very touchy and sometimes lethal issue here…

“I am saying that it may or may not be as bad as we think”

for instance, what’s your point here, exactly? why point out that a few hundred thousand beatings is technically better than a million, unless you want to imply that this means we shouldn’t be as concerned as we were before?

“and, in fact, the document I used states that intimate partner violence and homicides dropped over the covered period, despite the fact the national population was rising. That says to me that we should work harder to figure out the causes driving that decrease, and exert more efforts along the same lines.”

i could be going out on a limb, but maybe one of the causes is those irresponsible people going out there quoting inaccurate figures in a genuine attempt to raise awareness of systemic violence against women.

and one of the reasons that a slap in the face is counted as violence as well as a punch in the face is that in some cases if you don’t break up with the guy who slapped you, he may punch you next month…

as i say, an interesting article, but it’s dangerous to feign neutrality…

OK, I’m done with the nit-pick (not normally something I do).

The breadth of your interests Eric truly amazes me. One question I have is what can we do societally or culturally that will slow the frequency or quantity of these types of violence? Can sharper punishment fix things? We’re facing full jail cells right now in many parts of the US, is it time we export them to Iraq? Should Iraq become the new Australia? How many people once perpetrating such a thing and then punished legally never do it again? This entry brings up more questions than it answers ;)

I also gotta say, though, that I wish there were some better, widely available, comprehensive statistics on browser usage. Perhaps the W3C should start a yearly browser census.. hehe..

I got access to the raw IIS logs, and being familiar with The Webalizer, I munged them into something it could handle and came up with some scary but fascinating numbers apart from what I’m looking for.

For example, better than 50% of all requests result in a 304 Not Modified. All of the 304s are on the same small set of files. 30% of requests result in 200 OK, and 15% of requests result in 302 Found.

Getting rid of all the 304s and the 302s would take somebody about an hour’s worth of work apiece and save perhaps 5G of traffic/month, probably more, (since I’m not sure how big a request/response pair is) or 20% of the web server’s traffic.

Frankly, I’m disgusted by the amount of violence in society. And the awful thing about it is that for every physically-battered woman out there, there is probably another who suffers emotional or mental abuse as well.

While resources like Google and online databases are worthwhile, I think it’s unfortunate that even scholarly works often don’t provide easy links to sources & context.

It seems, particularly with Molly’s response, that what was being measured by these particular statistics spoiled some readers’ enjoyment of your post. I must admit though I paid no attention to that as I was far too interested in how close you’d get to concretely confirming or denying a particular quoted statistic.

The problem with statistics is that even when they are accurately quoted they require context and caveats so that we all know what we are talking about. I find that it is generally better to stick to principals and discuss those, utilitarians be damned.

As you say, this ability to be a conduit for self-education is one of the most amazing aspects of the web. That it allows smart, thoughtful people such as yourself to easily reach people all over the planet is another.

I would comment to Molly that a great value in examining such statistics is that it makes it possible to spot bs more easily and helps us to understand the motives of those who would profit from it. (For instance it becomes hard to justify a no-tolerance attitude on crime where people are locked up and the key is thrown away if it turns out that the crime rate is independent of the incarceration rate.) Also it lets us see that we are becoming a better society, even though we may still have a long way to go.

And by god, we’ve got to find that woman and help her!

In the case of domestic violence, there are several sources that need to be used to get a full picture. Once is the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) done by the FBI. This is the first report generally used any time crime statistics are sought. However it has many limitations including: dividing all crime in two categories; relying almost solely on crimes reported to, and recorded by, police (thereby excluding any crime not reported or recorded); limiting the count to the perceived most serious crimes; and having little detailed information about the crimes, with the exception of homicide.

The Justice Department publishes the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) which looks at crime from a different perspective. The survey is given to large numbers of households (about 60,000 at any given time, representing about 135,000 individuals), it covers crime not reported or acted upon by the police, and gives more detailed information about the crime victims than does the UCR.

Even though using both of these reports will give a clearer picture than either alone, there are still nuanses of victim identification and explanations of specific crime that are omitted in both reports.

For domestic violence (as well as other crimes, including crimes against children which are rarely officially reported anywhere) the official numbers are both too conservative and too broad, depending on the aspect they are attempting to address.

The truth is that crime and violence, no matter who is on the receiving end, impacts the whole of society in some fashion. That friends and family are much more likely to harm other friends and/or family, makes the statistics – whatever they may be – hard to digest. That a large number of women are killed by their loved one every year, is only out-paced by the number of women assaulted again by loved ones. Included in these figures are unknown numbers of children who are exposed to violent assault each year, either as a witness or a victim.

I applaud your point that we must be cautious about what we believe when it comes to statistics. At the same time, I hope that people understand that the fault is not usually with the numbers themselves, but with the individuals interpreting them.

Browser stats? Unless you work for MS or AOL, who really cares? What does someone gain by skewing stats? Nothing.

Domestic or gender abuse? Much different. If you can’t read Eric’s words without anger, then – I’m very sorry to say – anyting YOU have to say I will listen with caution as to YOU and YOUR agenda. And trust mee, everyting being reported in the media today is part of somebody’s agenda.

“Facts” that someone pulls out of their butt are commonly used to further political goals/agendas. It is one of the things that truly irritates me about the media and politicians. And it can give a poor impression of a particular group of people – men in particular, in this case.

Don’t get me wrong, to my way of thinking, there is no excuse for striking anyone unless it is in defense of your person or your loved ones. Furthermore, one person beaten by their significant other is one too many.

However, you must take a cold, hard, look at what you are reading and seeing – and determine if the information is being skewed and if so why. That is often the bigger story, frankly.