Quote Originally Posted by David Vincent View Post
This is what happens when you go by feelings instead of evidence. I am not Splott Dai.

When you look at all the evidence against Savile it is the relatively small number of accusers that surprises me. Let us say there are 100 known victims - I don't know if this is the real figure. How many different people did Savile meet in his career? Let's say 50 a week. That's probably on the conservative side. He did that for 55 years. That's 143,000 different people he met. If he was an uncontrolled sex pervert I would expect a far higher number of victims.

Sometimes we are unduly influenced by the numbers we see in the papers. Here is a little puzzle for you. Suppose the police decide to do a breathalyzer test at 9.00 on a Sunday morning and they are stopping people completely randomly. They are not looking at your driving at all. Let us suppose they know from previous random tests during that time period 1 person in a 1000 will be driving drunk. Suppose that the breathalyzer test is 95% accurate - there is only a 5% false positive chance. That morning they have stopped 1000 drivers and you are one of them. You have failed the test. How likely is it that you are drunk?
That's more accurate than eye witness evidence though. You're putting forward more arguments against the death penalty with every post.

(95% accurate doesn't mean wrong 5% of the time btw, that would be 95% reliable. If it was 95% accuracy you would just build in a 10% error margin to counteract it)