Professorial Innumeracy
John Cole points out a particularly uninformed comment by Juan Cole:
AP reports that the one-day total for war-related violence in Iraq, including the police station bombing in Tikrit reported here yesterday morning, came to 30. That is about 11,000 persons a year if the rate were constant and extrapolated out.
John offers a couple of examples demonstrating the innumeracy of this logic, including:
Close to 3,000 people were killed on September 11th. That is over a million people a year if the rate remains constant and extrapolated out.
Indeed.
Except that, last I heard, 9/11 was a rather singular incident. Car bombings, suicide bombings, roadside bombs, shootings, etc. are rather more common in Iraq.