Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 January 23

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January 23

Biden's gaffes

Hi! I've seen there is an article about Bushisms. Should there be an article about Biden's gaffes? Please don't make it political, I'm not American. Kindly answer without mentioning his opponent. Ericdec85 (talk) 01:08, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• It might be possible to create an article on his stutter, along the lines of Paralytic illness of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Abductive (reasoning) 01:47, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Laughing at stutterers is horrible but I first saw this in a version with a giant font transcription refreshing every second or so and when he starts stuttering it switches to accumulating each word in real-time till they're all over the screen and the before and after of the dude behind him.. that cracked me up. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 07:48, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I remember you could buy tear-away calendars of Bushisms. Maybe I'm misunderestimating the popularity of Biden's gaffes but I don't think he's quite on that level. I don't think he's come up with anything quite like covfefe yet, either. -- asilvering (talk) 07:49, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

From beyond the Atlantic, it seems the worst presidential gaffs on the grandest scale were made by that nice Mr Trump. We have a Trumpism article, but that is about ideology, rather like Stalinism. Alansplodge (talk) 09:43, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Or "United Shates".[1] --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:11, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Also "Nambia" and "bigly" (apparently the correct pronunciation of "big league"). Alansplodge (talk) 17:08, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

D'oh! The OP told us to answer without mentioning his opponent, but I think we got away with it. Alansplodge (talk) 17:12, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

The OP asked. But OP's can't give orders. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

But we aim to please. Alansplodge (talk) 09:47, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

"...Onions are beautiful things." --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:18, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

In my life, I've never seen anything like that for a Democrat President. Every Democrat President is treated as a saviour to the nation. Every Republican President (except baby Bush because he was far too stupid) is satan. You can publish a lot of books about how terrible satan is. You can't publish books about how terrible a saviour is. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 16:12, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Asked whether Obama was no better than Bush 43 or Blair, Chomsky replied, "In many ways he's worse."^[2] What is holding you back from starting a publishing house devoted to promulgating works that expose the terribleness of Democratic US Presidents?  --Lambiam 17:18, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm sure such houses exist. The issue is availability. Do they produce anything that is available? I'm sure it is easier to find some nutjob anti-Democrat website than it is to find a book. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 19:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Check your local Barnes & Noble. There's a whole raft of books by "conservative" authors, i.e. those who don't like Democrats. And you're probably too young to remember how Bill Clinton was mercilessly savaged by comedians. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:32, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Biden hasn't been in office that long, and most other Democratic presidents from the last century that I can think of didn't have the outsized personalities that would lead to books being written about their foibles. The exception that comes to mind is Lyndon Johnson, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are such books about him. As for stuff criticizing Democrats from other than partisan conservatism: yes of course that is a thing. Look at jacobinmag.com or commondreams.org for example. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:C115 (talk) 11:47, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Unreported cases of domestic violence

It goes as a known fact that 80% of DV cases are unreported (the "iceberg" model). My question is, if the cases are indeed unreported, how do we eventually count them for this statistic? Gil_mo (talk) 08:41, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Gil_mo There is no mention of your "known fact" in our Domestic violence article. Where did you get this from? I think you will find it's an estimate rather than a "known fact", whatever that is.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:19, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I found this number it in other places. But nevertheless, how do we know there are underreported issues when they are not reported? How could we make statistical data out of the underreported cases? Gil_mo (talk) 09:39, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Victimization surveys were developed to address the limitations of police statistics as crime data sources (Skogan 1977), and estimates produced from crime surveys can be used to mitigate the sources of measurement error in police data. From Measuring the dark figure of crime in geographic areas. Alansplodge (talk) 09:50, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

See also Dark figure of crime (Wikipedia Has An Article On Everything!). Alansplodge (talk) 09:52, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

So if I understand correctly, the "unreported" cases are actually reported, but not to the "official" database? Gil_mo (talk) 10:21, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, I suppose that a projection (or guestimate) has been made on the basis of the results of surveys. Over here we have the Crime Survey for England and Wales which is conducted rather like an opinion poll, they don't ask everyone in the country. Alansplodge (talk) 11:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

The samples for such surveys cover only a small fraction of the population. Most crimes not reported to law-enforcement agencies are not reported at all, whether directly or indirectly, to crime data sources.  --Lambiam 14:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

So if amongst those in the sample group who had experienced domestic violence, 80% of them hadn't reported it to the police, it might be assumed that a similar ratio occurs across the whole country. It's not an exact science. Alansplodge (talk) 21:08, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

It is all too true that ensuring that a sample is representative of the population is not a hard science. The next hurdle, for a survey conducted with a questionnaire, is to design the right questions with the right set of responses, which requires an understanding of the terrain, the lack of which may be the motivation for the survey. Then the hope is to obtain appropriate and correct responses, but this cannot guaranteed. The risk that a respondent's situation does not fit any of a fixed set of responses is real. If the survey is conducted through open interviews, interviewees my be shy to give truthful responses, and responses given may be hard to classify. Once the data are in, assuming the sample was representative and the responses are correct, extrapolating the results to population statistics together with corresponding confidence intervals is an exact science. Of course, one should never state that "5% of all people have been abducted by aliens"; at best it should be "5% of the adult population of Georgia report to have been abducted by aliens".  --Lambiam 22:52, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant that the results were not exact. I agree that all the factors that you mention are calculated very carefully by people much more intelligent than my humble self. Alansplodge (talk) 23:27, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

The National Crime Victimization Survey may be of interest to the OP. I'm guessing that it includes coverage of domestic violence, but I admit to not having read the article. Edit: perhaps also of interest may be its British counterpart, the British Crime Survey. Eliyohub (talk) 07:39, 24 January 2022 (UTC)