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Old 05-12-2008, 12:59 PM
 
1,051 posts, read 2,602,186 times
Reputation: 638

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Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
I'm not quite sure I understood this sentence, but in your analogy, of course it isn't a coincidence that heavy rainfall and devastated trailer parks are correlated. The explanation is that both are effects of a common cause, namely strong storm systems.
Ahhhh.....I think I understand your problem. You may be misunderstanding what a correlation is.

A correlation is a rigorously defined thing that measures the following. If I see X happening, how often will I also see Y happening. So, if X and Y are highly correlated then I know "whenever I see X I will most likely also see Y". So in tornado alley we know trailer park devastation and heavy rainfall are highly correlated bacause whenever I see trailer park devastation I also see heavy rainfall.

However, the correlation says nothing about whether X caused Y, or Y caused X, or if X and Y where caused by something else entirely. So it is incorrect to conclude that heavy rainfall causes trailer park devastation, or that trailer park devastation makes it rain. Just because 2 items are correlated does not mean that one causes the other....it's possible that one causes the other...but there is no way for us to know.

We can use our intuition and speculate, but really it's all just speculation.
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:01 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,877,652 times
Reputation: 2910
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana View Post
However, as I previously stated, about 75% of the people in Colorado live in metro Denver. So a statewide vote shows how Denver is thinking. Colorado Springs can't carry the state.
First, I thought you agreed that Denver did in fact have a relatively large gay population. So I'm still not sure what you are trying to claim

Second, I just checked the vote on Amendment 43, which banned gay marriages in Colorado in 2006. Although the vote in Colorado was 55% in favor, in Denver County specifically it was over 62% against. Similarly, Boulder County was almost 67% against. You can get county by county results here:

2006 Initiative General Election Results - Colorado

Now I assume when you are talking about "metro Denver", you are including the suburban counties. What I think this shows in conjunction with the gay population statistics is that even metropolitan areas are likely too large for the purpose of identifying communities that could be considered "gay-friendly", and states certainly are.
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:03 PM
 
1,051 posts, read 2,602,186 times
Reputation: 638
Also, I don't think Humaniod mischaracterized anything.

You stated that your point is:

Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH
The bottom line of our analysis is basic: tolerance and diversity clearly matter to high-technology concentration and growth.
That is a invalid conclusion.....

1. Your logic does not follow from a corralelation.

2. Business does not work like that. Business is interested in things like, tax liability, proximity to relevent markets, long term investment potential, access to relevent infrastructure, is the location comensurate with long term growth strategy..........tolerance and diversity are way way way down near the bottom of the list.

Last edited by zip95; 05-12-2008 at 01:17 PM..
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:17 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,877,652 times
Reputation: 2910
Zip95, I'm going to ask you to understand the following three things before we continue this discussion, because I think that will save both of us a lot of effort:

(1) I am not claiming a correlation between X and Y implies that X caused Y or that Y caused X.

(2) Specifically, I am not claiming that a relatively high gay population causes high tech success.

(3) To my knowledge, no one who has studied this issue has made the claim that a relatively high gay population causes high tech success.

Because those three things are true, your last post simply wasn't relevant to anything I have claimed or reported in this discussion.
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:27 PM
 
1,051 posts, read 2,602,186 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
Zip95, I'm going to ask you to understand the following three things before we continue this discussion, because I think that will save both of us a lot of effort:

(1) I am not claiming a correlation between X and Y implies that X caused Y or that Y caused X.

(2) Specifically, I am not claiming that a relatively high gay population causes high tech success.

(3) To my knowledge, no one who has studied this issue has made the claim that a relatively high gay population causes high tech success.

Because those three things are true, your last post simply wasn't relevant to anything I have claimed or reported in this discussion.
Well maybe I'm confused then....what exactly are you trying to say.
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:33 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,877,652 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zip95 View Post
Also, I don't think Humaniod mischaracterized anything. You stated that your point is ...
Actually, that is a quote from the study. And please note the full quote I provided directly contradicts what Humanoid implied in Post #48, because they specifically disclaimed the idea that the correlation in this case indicated direct causation.

Quote:
1. Your logic does not follow from a corralelation.
If you haven't already, you should read the study, which goes into the evidence for those conclusions in a lot of detail. If you would like you can then feel free to comment on where exactly you think they went wrong in their analysis ... who knows, I might even agree!

Quote:
2. Business does not work like that. Business is interested in things like, tax liability, proximity to relevent markets, long term investment potential, access to relevent infrastructure, is the location comensurate with long term growth strategy..........tolerance and diversity are way way way down near the bottom of the list.
Well, that has long been the assumption of many people. But the basic theory is that businesses in a set of interlocking high-growth industries--what are sometimes collectively called the "knowledge economy"--also very much care about something you didn't mention, which is talented employees. And to compete for talented employees, they need to consider locating where the employees they need to attract and retain would like to live. And so identifying such communities becomes an important consideration for businesses in this "knowledge industry".

And from an economics point of view, this isn't a particularly outlandish suggestion. Basically, you could treat talented workers just like any other crucial input to a business model, and note that businesses frequently locate where they can find an abundant supply of one or more of their crucial inputs. So, this is really no different from steel companies locating where they could find abundant coal (e.g., Pittsburgh). It is just in this case, these knowledge-based businesses need a resource that takes the form of people, rather than a material like coal.
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:42 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,219,944 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
They have indeed found a correlation between openly gay people and economic development. In fact, Florida found a correlation specifically between a "gay index" and high tech success. All that was one of the major results leading to the insight that members of the creative class broadly defined valued tolerance and diversity.
The above is what you said at the very beginning of this conversation. As for what am I claiming, I thought claiming was gang language. What I am trying to say is, the high-tech workers throughout metro Denver do not uniformly support gay rights.

The major high tech employment centers are:

Denver Tech Center in Arapahoe County, which voted 55.7% to ban gay marriage

Denver, duly noted by you

Boulder County, duly noted by you

Interlochen at Broomfield in Broomfield County, 52.44 % in favor of the ban.

In addition, Jefferson County, the second largest county in Colorado in population, just west of Denver, and home of the Federal Center, the Solar Energy Reseach Institute, and many other high tech companies, vote 54.6% in favor of the ban. Douglas County, just south of the tech center and also the home of a lot of high-tech workers voted 61.8% in favor of the ban.
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:45 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,877,652 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zip95 View Post
Well maybe I'm confused then....what exactly are you trying to say.
Well first, I am saying there is an observed correlation. Which is true.

Second, I am reporting the broader theory some people have developed to explain this and several other observed correlations. Again, the theory is basically that we are observing correlations like this because both gay people and high tech people often end up being attracted to the same neighborhoods as a result of those neighborhoods being known as tolerant and diverse, and that members of the "creative class" in general tend to be attracted to such neighborhoods.

That is why a proper analogy along your lines would be something like this: just as the presence of strong storm systems is a plausible explanation for the observed correlation between heavy rain and trailer park destruction, in this case the presence of tolerant and diverse communities is a plausible explanation for the observed correlation between the gay index and high tech success.

Now, they don't just leap to that conclusion from this one correlation. Rather, they also study other correlations, track this correlation over time, subject it to statistical analysis, and so on. To continue the analogy, there is more behind the conclusion about storms causing both the rain and the tornados than just the observed correlation, but rather a lot of other observations and analysis which support that conclusion. The same is true of the reasoning in this study.

But again, I am fine if people want to critique the study. I just want to make sure that we start with a common understanding of what they are actually proposing as an explanation for the observed correlation, and their explanation is NOT that the correlation implies a direct causal link.
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:52 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,877,652 times
Reputation: 2910
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana View Post
As for what am I claiming, I thought claiming was gang language.
I don't know what this means.

Quote:
What I am trying to say is, the high-tech workers throughout metro Denver do not uniformly support gay rights.
Again, that isn't really relevant to the theory. The theory is that high tech people and gay people are often attracted to some of the same attributes in communities. That theory does not imply that high tech people "uniformly support gay rights", nor even support gay rights in any particular percentages relative to the general population.

Quote:
The major high tech employment centers are:

Denver Tech Center in Arapahoe County, which voted 55.7% to ban gay marriage

Denver, duly noted by you

Boulder County, duly noted by you

Interlochen at Broomfield in Broomfield County, 52.44 % in favor of the ban.

In addition, Jefferson County, the second largest county in Colorado in population, just west of Denver, and home of the Federal Center, the Solar Energy Reseach Institute, and many other high tech companies, vote 54.6% in favor of the ban. Douglas County, just south of the tech center and also the home of a lot of high-tech workers voted 61.8% in favor of the ban.
I think you are on to an interesting research program. I'd suggest doing it rigorously: if you can get data for the percentage of high tech workers by county, you could then go through a rigorous statistical analysis and determine if there was a statistically significant correlation or not. You could then see if you can test for subdivisions hypothesis about military influence as an extraneous factor, perhaps by identifying some useful measure of military presence for which you could then control.

But again, that actually isn't really relevant to the theory in question. Still, it is interesting.
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Old 05-12-2008, 01:56 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,219,944 times
Reputation: 35920
It certainly shows there is no big support for gay rights among high tech workers, as it stands, since Denver metro has the third largest percentage of high tech workers of any city in the country.
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