** Private ** wrote: > Someone wrote a book that I'm too lazy to look up
Do you live near the equator? > but basically it > pointed out that your probability of poverty was directly proportional > to your distance from the equator. I would say that at best you could get a normalized covariance of about -0.3 (which is quite different from the 1 the book claims). > His reasoning was that people from cold climates had to work harder > and plan more to get food due to winters whereas tropical areas had > mostly plentiful food year round, thus the winter folks developed > stronger work ethics. It seems unreasonable to try to attribute a (debatable) property that is so complex to just a single cause. If I were to add some other causes that need to be taken into account before I consider such a book worth the paper it is written on: - economic system. The chance of living in poverty is influenced by the division of wealth inside a country (i.e., while the US is richer then most of Western Europe, the chance of living in poverty in the US is also higher). - political systems. - history. Was a country colonized or not, did it go through many wars, revolutions etc. - religion. Countries colonized by reformed Christians are usually richer then countries colonized by non-reformed Christians. > Any thoughts of whether that's true or is it bogus science? The covariance may very well be off from 0. The single minded explanation is bogus. Jochem ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Get involved in the latest ColdFusion discussions, product development sharing, and articles on the Adobe Labs wiki. http://labs/adobe.com/wiki/index.php/ColdFusion_8 Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:245516 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
