Blogger Moon of Alabama has found something quite interesting: a huge number of incidents in Afghanistan and/or about Taliban involves “30 militants”, “30 insurgents” or “30 enemies”. His conclusion:
Obviously there is some bias towards the number 30 in the news and reporting from the Hindu Kush. The tells us how unreliable all of these reports really are.
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I’m sure the number will soon change. I noted one poster at the site seemed to think the number 40 would mean something to Christians.
I think that was “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” or some such.
Stalin might not have said “the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic”, but if he did, he might have been talking about today’s politicians and media, and here’s why:
30 is an important number in statistics: it’s the generally-accepted minimum number of samples you need, if you’re going to make predictions based on a sample population. You can find detailed explanations in text books, and Wikipedia puts it like this: “In general, if a population mean is estimated using the sample mean from n observations from a distribution with variance σ², then if n is large enough (typically >30) the central limit theorem can be applied to obtain an approximate 95% confidence interval”
My translation: 30 is the number at which a tragedy becomes a statistic. Any fewer, it’s a tragedy, and it gets the “tragedy” treatment from the media. More than 30, it’s just numbers.
Interesting points, brian t, but aren’t they just numbers anyway if no names are listed in the reports?
I seem to remember reading comments by reporters and/or CIA operatives in Afghanistan as the war on the Taliban was beginning in 2001. The statements were essentially divide any number reported to you from the locals by 5 to get the actual ballpark figure.
30 is an interesting number even in our own culture.
Look what happens here at age 30 :
– “girls” become “woman”
– “boys” are “men” (note gays become elderly)
I’m sure there’s something in the bible about 30 or some magic number as well.
Funnily enough, Megan Carpentier from Air America arrived at the exact opposite conclusion: 30 was the maximum number of people that could be killed without risking a PR disaster if they turned out to be noncombatants, and thus strikes targeting more than 30 would have to be approved by the bigwigs. So if a field commander saw a group of potential targets, estimating the group size as 30 would allow him to skip the wait for an authorization.