XPost: misc.phone.mobile.iphone, comp.mobile.android
From: ithinkiam@gmail.com
On 09/12/2015 05:46, Jolly Roger wrote:
> Paul M. Cook wrote:
>> On Tue, 08 Dec 2015 20:36:17 -0800, Savageduck wrote:
>>
>>> Your assumption is that accident rates should rise with cellphone
>>> ownership.
>>
>> That is exactly the assumption I would make
>
> It's good you admit you are making this huge I'll-advised assumption.
>
>> if all these are true:
>>
>> 1. Cellphone use is distracting & distractions are dangerous
>> 2. Accident rates compiled over the past 50 years are reliable
>> 3. Cellphone ownership skyrocketed during a certain time frame
>> & we assume a percentage of owners use them while driving.
>
> Of course you're ignoring the many factors unrelated to cell phone use that
> may decrease accident rates, because that's the only way your silly
> argument can work.
Exactly.
Even if the accident rate did go up it wouldn't be proof that cellphone
use causes accidents. It only shows that there is a *correlation*
between the two. As we all know correlation does not imply causation.
The correlation could be down to a totally unrelated effect. Just like
ice cream sales don't cause shark attacks:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation
The only way to truly test whether one effect causes another is to test
the effect explicitly. For example, take a suitably large number of
people who drive (it might be 100 or 1000 or 10,000) monitor their
driving for a suitable period of time (a week or month) both with and
without a cellphone. Then test to see if there is an
observable/statistical difference in the rate of accidents (or other
measure such as 'near misses') when the people drove while using a
cellphone vs when they didn't. Job done.
So Paul, you can make as many assumptions as you like, but no
correlative data of any sort is proof one way or another. This is why
people do studies.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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