Friday, May 27, 2011

Claims about Osama

Do you believe what the U.S. government said about Osama bin Laden's death is true? Take the survey! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A few weeks ago President Obama released news that Osama bin Laden was killed by DEVGRU in his three story mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Pictures of the compound where he was hiding and one in particular of his bedroom with a pool of blood on the floor have been released.



However no photographs of Osama's body have released or leaked to the public. There are a few fakes floating around on the internet that look real though.



It was also said that his body was properly "buried" in the ocean and that DNA evidence was taken to confirm that he was killed. This has lead many to believe much of the government's story is false and that Osama was not really killed.

Because this can be such a controversial topic, a friend and I decided to use it as the topic for our final project in AP Statistics. We wanted to take a sample of individuals at a shopping center in our area, asking them "Do you believe the government's claims about Osama bin Laden's death?" and we would then group each person's answer based on their ethnicity. Then we would have an Arab friend of ours ask the same question to a sample of people in the same shopping center. We would then use a chi-squared test of independence to test the hypothesis that when the question was asked by a person of Middle-Eastern decent, peoples of most or all ethnicities would change their proportion of yes answers. This would provide cause to believe that the ethnic background of the interview can create a bias in the response of the subjects, especially on such a controversial topic as this.

When we submitted our proposal, our statistics teacher naturally thought this type of survey was a bit too racy, and warned us, but decided to allow us to follow through with it otherwise. So we went to the nearest major shopping center, a mall a few miles away, and stood outside one of the main entrances asking our question.

Unfortunately, after taking a decent sample size, we realized that one demographic of peoples was blatantly missing from our survey, and this demographic might have been one of the most interesting to get a sample of. We couldn't continue sampling as we were, because without that one group (I'm not going to say which) the whole synopsis of our survey was ruined. We also couldn't just go somewhere else and continue sampling, because that would mess with our data in unforetold ways, and we couldn't just stop because a report of our data was due the following morning.

Our only option was to quickly modify our survey and continue sampling. We decided that the best way to do this was to instead group people by their age, whether they were younger or older than 30 years of age, and use a two proportion z-test to see whether there was a difference between these two groups on the opinion of the government's story about Osama bin Laden's death.

Switching to this was a very good idea, because we were able to gather enough data to perform the statistical testing in a relatively short amount of time, leaving the rest of the day for us to do the two proportion z-test and write the report.

But one can never gather enough data to produce a completely accurate estimation of the population's opinion, so I decided to post it here to see if I could gather a little bit more data. It's completely voluntary (duh) but it would be cool if you could answer the survey over there >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I will post the complete results with the survey and statistical test in a week or so. Also, if you feel like it, go ahead and post a comment stating your ethnicity and what you answered in the survey, just for the hell of it.

36 comments:

  1. I don't believe it for a minute. It has been a joke ever since he was announced as public enemy #1. And there's the small thing that he wasn't responsible for 9/11. It's just theatre.

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  2. I really do believe it, however I do find it a tad odd all the things with the case. The burial, lack of pictures, and so on, but I still do believe it, I think it's a pretty big hting to lie on.

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  3. why dont they just release a photo of him?
    instead of excuses

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  4. I believe it. I don't see what could be gained through a cover-up of this sort.

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  5. can you smell conspiracy theory?

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  6. I believe it. I just hope its true.

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  7. I don't know if it's true or not, I only hope that is true

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  8. I think it's true, there's no way the US government can pull off a stunt of that magnitude. There are just too many people involved in that operation to make it stick.

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  9. I have been debating this topic too. There seems to be no true evidence that he was killed, and it seems the US government and Obama had a lot to gain by "accomplishing" their mission. But at the same time, you would think Bin Laden would be very quick to put out a video if to restore his troops. Idk, I'm interested to see the results of your survey.

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  10. I don't know if I can believe it... No pictures, no proofs...

    It could be true though.

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  11. The U.S. government can not be trusted, what fools, what fools.

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  12. There's something fishy about this... Following

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  13. I'm sure he's dead. Al Qaeda would never confirm his death if he wasn't.

    However, I don't think the US killed him in April, and I'm not sure they even killed him in Pakistan.

    The president of Iran claims that the US has held Osama captive for a couple years. Other people claim that he died of kidney failure in the early 2000's.

    Until I see the death video/photo, it's just way too suspicious

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  14. I honestly don't know if he was killed, but I'm very sceptic about no pictures at all being released...

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  15. I don't see why they didn't just release a photo and end it.

    Though you reminded me about something Colbert said.
    He was talking about waterboarding and said something like "Before, we were waterboarding to find out where Bin Laden was. Now, only the fish can tell us. And waterboarding doesn't work on them..." XDDDD
    But seriously. Waterboarding is inhumane and shouldn't exist. >:/

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  16. If he's not dead he should totally make a video saying how wrong is USA, that would take down the reliance on the media haha, oh well, i don't really know, great info man!

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  17. Yes. It's true. And I think he died a couple years ago however. Not just recently.

    We were just using his "existence" as a reason to justify keeping our troops in Afghanistan longer. That way we could go to Pakistan and kill the rest of the Taliban fighters.

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  18. Lovely blog and post! keep up the great work!

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  19. HE'S ALIVE! HE'S BEING KEPT ALIVE BY THE ILLUMINATI AND THE LIZARD PEOPLE!!!111!! IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY!!!1!!1!!ONE!~~~!!!

    In All seriousness, I think he was caught. I'm still kinda....I'm skeptical about whether he was caught or not, but I like to hope that he was.

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  20. he prob was. if he was alive there would be some stupid video of him taunting the US

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  21. Interesting post. Keep em coming.

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  22. Can we believe everything we read in history books? Can we believe everything we learn online? Can we believe that strange story our friend swears is true? Unfortunately we can't physically see evidence for every single truth in the world. That doesn't mean we should blindly believe things without sufficient evidence either. Personally, all I can say is that I don't know and that I'm as certain about his death as I am about the death of Abraham Lincoln. Very interesting blog, going to follow.

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  23. i just know that im done with his sneaky bullshit and im not gonna get sand in my ass lookin for him, if i spot on the streets, im just gonna pretend its the falafel guy

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  24. Obvious political playing card is obvious.

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  25. I've got to say, in the world as it appears, we need not worry about the actions of war and of peace. we must keep to our towns, when our towns fail as time to time they do, we go to our county and if they should offer us little help our state will do us well, and when they cannot deliver it is then that we look to the federal government.

    This action has little to do with the you and me, it concerns me not if fake or real. If you do not like what happens in one of the parts of government, you can easily move from america to many other nations. a bit harder the opposite way round.

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  26. I voted no. Canadian, white. I'm always very skeptical of anything politicians say, and the incentive to lie about this is huge.

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  27. Meh. He's dead or he isn't. He honestly is no more a threat than any other well-connected terrorist. Less of one, actually, since people are always looking for him.

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  28. I think Osama's death isn't the most important thing in this war against terrorism. Many bomb attacks orchestrated by al Qaeda happened and will happen in next months for sure...

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  29. this blog is very good mmmm

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