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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 10:13
PM
Subject: Re: Electoral College
In a message dated 11/13/00 9:58:03 PM Eastern Standard
Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Earlier, Bemmzim asserted that the outcome of the popular vote
has not been
in doubt.
This is not true. If the
nation were Florida, an automatic recount would
have been triggered.
Can you just *imagine* the mess?
More importantly, a
national popular vote would basically permit all the
corruption in
places like Chicago and Milawukee to affect much more than
one state's
electoral votes.
There are a lot of advantages to having 51 small
elections than one big one.
On balance all corruption and mistakes would even
themselves out because
corruption and mistakes are local phenomena not
sytematic. So florida
cancells chicago. In addition. think of it as a
signal to noise problem. this
something that is key to medical imaging.
there is a certain amount of noise
that is inherent in any image, call it
"10". Now if the overall signal in an
image is "20" then 50% of the value
is noise (random). So how do you deal
with noise. You can't eliminate it
(in a medical image it is due to quantum
effects). So you overwhelm it
with more signal. The finer you want your image
to be (the better the
"spacial resolution") the higher the signal you need.
If you want to look
at small structures you have to provide more signal
because the noise
cannot be reduced. But you don't have to eliminate the
noise just increase
the signal). In the! ! ! election the noise are the mistakes
and cheats.
But these over the entire country are random (unless you are
arguing that
they are systematic which would imply a conspiracy). So just
increase the
signal (count more votes). To take the analogy further. I can
infact
differentiate two structures (bush and gore) quite well if I look at
the
entire image but if I try to differentiate bush and gore in the liver and
the lungs and the brain I get less signal in each division but no
diminution
in noise. If I then go to smaller and smaller struuctures like
the
hypothalamus and the basal ganglia (like going down to counties in the
vote)
the problem becomes worse not better.
So when you go all the way down to the individual
level................?
xponent
rob
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