Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
In science, checking the validity of an assumption by comparing it to an independent process that should, if the assumption is valid, yield the same result, is a perfectly logical and very common method.
If they are that different, then it tells us that the numbers mhays is seeking are almost certainly in reality a hybrid of the two values - which is perfectly attainable, for the record.
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But we can already deduce that it won't yield the same result since we are measuring a density gradient. We would get two completely different results with one being more accurate than the other (accurate with respect to the 1 mile radius measurement). In this case we just want to get the conversion factor as low as possible for the most accurate comparison, which is probably why mhays went with the 2km radius measurement in the first place. I would have done the same thing - get the numbers for the 2km radius and multiply by 0.65 to get the 1mile radius equivalent.
Now if I was being really sneaky and wanted to produce inflated numbers for certain cities I would use the 1km radius numbers, and I could be more selective in where I center the circle, and multiply those numbers by 2.59 to get the desired result. All of this is covered in my course "How to lie with stats and math 101."
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