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Monday, August 12, 2024

Letter to the Editor: Statistics are misleading

To the Editor,

In your otherwise excellent August 10 article, "Brookside traffic cameras an "enormous success” says Lake Forest Park mayor despite "messy” bill and mistakes", I was disappointed to see some misleading statistics on race published for a second time. In the piece, the LFP PD are quoted as stating that, "although less than 4% of Lake Forest Park residents are Black, 12% of people who received a traffic ticket in the city were Black" 

As I wrote in my May 28 LTE, comparing those 2 statistics isn't meaningful as an indicator of bias and worse, is actually misleading; the percentage of LFP residents who are Black should be compared with the percentage of Black residents who received tickets.

Gay Armsden
Lake Forest Park



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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 13, 2024 at 5:13 PM

    Thank you for sharing this.

    Subtle details and distinction are extremely important in statistics, and it's refreshing to see issues like these pointed out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousAugust 13, 2024 at 8:26 PM

    thank you for reminding us to take care throwing statistics around

    ReplyDelete

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