Racial Profiling and Bayes Theorem

People who oppose racial profiling simply do not understand the implications of Bayes theorem. Very few Arabs are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Arabs. The first point is irrelevant. The second point implies that to maximize your probability of catching a terrorist, your limited screening resources must be directed primarily at Arabs.

"all Arabs are terroists"...give me a break! That cowardly cop, who slammed that sixteen year old kid's head, against that squad car, then popped the kid, with a blind sided punch, is a REAL TERROIST!

The problem with your argument is that because of racial profiling if we just screen arabs, then the terrorists become encouraged to recruit non-arabs. Your Bayes Theory argument would make sense as long as the population of terrorists remains constant. In a real world this won't necessarily be the case.

hear about the fbi agent who shot the kid in the face

I use the term "Arab" loosely to refer to all those nationalities of the Islamic world from which the terrorists are likely find recruits. Sure there are other people who hate America that might be recruited. But right now the large numbers of individuals already trained are of this background, and this will probably always be the case. I can't see large numbers of sympathizers willing to die for the Islamic Jihad coming out of Finland.


Currently in an attempt to appear politically correct, some airports are screening every 10th person in line, even if they are a little old lady from Pasadena. This is a waste of resources which reduces the probability of catching terrorists over profiling, and places our nation at risk. I don't like it one bit.

"but almost all terrorists are Arabs."


How the hell do you figure this?


Ever heard of the IRA (Irish), the ETA (Basque), arguably there are Chechen terrorists, Kurdish terroists (from Turkey's view), Phillipino terrorists, Kashmiri terrorists, the UNITA rebels, the FARC. I could go on. Even of Bush's axis of Evil, only one country (Iraq) is an Arab country.


I'm wondering if you even understand what Arab means?


Paul Talbot

Oh okay,


"I use the term "Arab" loosely to refer to all those nationalities of the Islamic world from which the terrorists are likely find recruits. "


This is of course, preposterous. Arabs make up a small minority of muslims. There are no large muslim countries that are Arab. Egypt is the largest but is dwarfed by Indonesia (the largest), India (over 100 million muslims), Pakistan, Iran and Turkey.


Equating Arab and Muslim is just silly. Of cousre it also ignores the large numbers of Arabs who are Christian (for example about 50% of Arab-Americans are Christian).


Your use of "Arab" is akin to using "Austrian" to refer to all Christians.


Paul Talbot

The terrorists I speak of which are of immediate concern to our airlines as a result of 9/11 are Islamic terrorists. In fact, the 9/11 hijackers were almost all Arab in the correct sense of the word. I think everyone understands who we are concerned about, so let's not muddy the waters with irrelevant technicalities.

That, Mason, is the same nonsense I hear from academics who spend about 5 hours and 5 dollars proving that "technical analysis" of stock price charts doesn't work.


You are saying, basically, that if 1 dollar of effort doesn't yield 10 billion dollars of returns, that it is impossible to get a return, and all effort is useless.


You could just as easily say, well, calling good hands in poker is stupid, because people will learn to read your hand, and then they'll only bet better better ones.


In reality, sound play and effort will raise your win rate by some measurable amount. Even if that rate seems immeasurable, or insignificant, to the casual participant.


eLROY

if you raise every time with an ace showing unless you are rolled up, and in a given situation you do notraise what do you have?


same scenario here. i think you would want to screen arabs at a higher percentage than others, and certainly there is no reason to do overall random screening. but the fact is that you have to screen others for the simple reason that terrorists will simply adjust to a self weighting strategy. saying it should be "primarily" arabs is way too restrictive. maybe a third to a half might be right as a guess.


Pat