> When we know that peoples perceptions of crime levels are entirely divorced from reality, perhaps you should spend less time watching Youtube, and more time looking at the actual stats
When we know that police is understaffed and can't respond to all crime, perhaps you should spend less time blindly trusting the numbers. You, too, can't build an argument on unreliable data. Just like the poster you're replying to.
The numbers I'm referring to are from the Crime Survey for England and Wales which surveys people rather than rely on crime reports, so police staffing is entirely irrelevant to these numbers.
This was literally pointed out in the comment you replied to.
The issue is there, they were just there at a time where these people who are snatching weren't there. 18 phone snatching per day on one street, but not at all hours, and not on all streets. It varies. But yeah, we want people's experiences. Maybe some of these people on HN did not experience it. Perhaps they could ask their friends and the friends of their friends.
The Crime Survey carries out large-scale surveys of a sample of 75,000 households. It's not some dinky little opinion poll.
It's not going to be perfect, but it gives a very solid snapshot of peoples experience with crime without the massive distortion we know we get from looking at similar sized samples asked what they think crime levels are.
> The Crime Survey carries out large-scale surveys of a sample of 75,000 households. It's not some dinky little opinion poll.
So? Sample size only addresses sampling error, not nonsampling error, for nonsampling error its exactly as bad as the dinkiest little poll on the same topic (and for sampling error, it's not much better; polls are the sizes they typically are because it doesn't actually take a very large scale to be fairly reliable when you only consider sampling error, and, again, adding more size doesn't help at all against nonsampling error.)
Ok, so what nonsampling errors in the Crime Survey make it unreliable in your view? What would you suggest as an alternative source of information about crime levels in England and Wales?
When they are asked about their firsthand experience as victims of crime, they may still be untrustworthy but they're still going to be far more trustworthy than the alternatives.
When we know that police is understaffed and can't respond to all crime, perhaps you should spend less time blindly trusting the numbers. You, too, can't build an argument on unreliable data. Just like the poster you're replying to.