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Governor demonstrates how not to use statistics

The quarantine that is being imposed by Gov. Ige Aug. 11 is a perfect example for a college level statistics 101 class on how not to use statistical data.

Ige is introducing a quarantine for people traveling from Maui to Hawaii, but not for people traveling from Maui to Oahu. The implicit assumption in that is the people on Oahu are at less risk than the people of Hawaii for catching COVID-19 from someone from Maui.

But that is a false assumption, as any statistics 101 student can tell you. The same risk occurs regardless of what the infection rate is on Oahu — if someone from Maui can infect five people, it does not matter whether those five people are on Oahu or the Big Island.

I understand completely the desire to halt the spread of COVID-19, but when politicians come up with poorly researched policies, it does not give me much confidence that they know what they are doing.

Scott Werden

Haiku

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