141–150 of 162 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mind telling tthe findings? :-)
From memory, one thing that surprised me was holidays. Thefts decrease in the days before a holiday that's basically just a day off for most people, but thefts increase in the days before a holiday that has a strong tradition for getting together with the extended family.
Here in Sweden I've noted that some sellers have started adding a Swish-number for payments. Swish is a Swedish payment service where you basically send money to a phone number. This is great since the only risk for the seller now is the produce. The cash can not be stolen.
I live in a tourist region of Switzerland and here the local supermarkets carry local produce e.g. cheeses and sausages bearing the name and address of the farmer who produced them.
In our village we can buy cheese, eggs, honey, and some preserves by letting ourselves into the cellar of the local farmer and leaving money in a jar.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Foreigners now account for 80% of the prison population in Switzerland: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/02/08/foreigners-make-... IQ scores are falling and have been for decades, new study finds: https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-r... https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.html
Please note that the falling IQ has nothing to do with the foreigners, at least not according to the linked study; IQ is going down even within families.
They then extensively massaged the data to make this difference disappear, which is what yields the headline. They did provide perfectly valid justifications for such, including the fact that IQ testing data was missing disproportionately often from brothers where the brother who had data available was of a low IQ. They thus proposed that the high heritability of IQ would then suggest that the missing data is probably disproportionately weighted against IQ, so that's what they did.
Nonetheless this massaging of the data opens the door to methodological problems. It enables researchers to choose the factors that they consider most relevant and to determine effective weighting for such. You will tend to find in this scenario that individuals who have the preconceived notion of 'x' end up choosing factors that show 'x'. And vice versa for those who assume 'y.' This isn't necessarily even malfeasance, but simply the fact that trying to control for a practically infinite number of possible confounding issues is as much an art as a science, and preconceived notions are going to end up being reflected in what one chooses.
For instance my bias is self evident and if I were going to pursue this sort of balancing I would certainly be sure to try to control for factors such as increasing paternal age, fertility assistance, and other things which can have negative effects on IQ. Some studies have even connected higher IQ parents to various disorders including autism which may mitigate against the missing IQ data bias. Controlling for these things is important. The reason that these researchers neglected them is not out of malfeasance, but because you can come up with a practically infinite number of things you need to control for. And so peoples biases end up reflecting the issues they find important.
The ultimate point is that I think the most impartial idea is to look at the data alone, so much as possible. This study made some fairly extreme changes to the data. Of course if my biases were different, I'd probably be singing a different tune. Isn't social "science" fun?
I saw these in rural New Zealand in 1982.
Even retail establishments with staff and security systems balance the extra costs of these “loss prevention” measures against customer convenience. The goal is never perfect security but sufficient security. Large retailers typically set targets on loss and try to minimize them, within reason. Farm stands that operate like this have simply found a reasonable cost/benefit trade off. (There’s an apple orchard near Bos…
Loss from stealing was called 'shrinkage' by retail industry people, in Sam Walton's autobiography 'Made in America'. As you say, they expected to have some. I wonder why it can't be prevented 100%.
This seems to be a property of the rural community rather than the country/people. The same happens in Tunisia in some very rural/remote places. The farmer will put their produce on the road, and then the buyers will collect from the road.
This was a surprise to me as Tunisia cities are plagued with vandalism and property theft.
Here in Sweden I've noted that some sellers have started adding a Swish-number for payments. Swish is a Swedish payment service where you basically send money to a phone number. This is great since the only risk for the seller now is the produce. The cash can not be stolen.
That sounds very Swedish! The nearest I've seen to that in Switzerland was a farm with a book where you can write your name, address, and how much you owe them. That was on a slightly larger farm (~100 cows and pigs) that sold expensive things like cold-cut meat too. I live in a tourist region of Switzerland and here the local supermarkets carry local produce e.g. cheeses and sausages bearing the name and address of…