Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 May 11

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May 11

Battle of Berlin footage

In this video [1], at 35-36 seconds, a Soviet troop is seen firing a canon while another soviet troop is falling on the ground probably because of absorbing the blast. Is it the case? And how a soldier can fire in such a way that cause freindly fire? --EditorMakingEdits (talk) 06:42, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

That does seem to be the case. We don't see if the soldier gets up again afterwards or if he was seriously injured. The Soviets were well known for their callousness to their own troops, machine gunning those who retreated without orders, see barrier troops and Shtrafbat. This seems to be just carelessness however. Alansplodge (talk) 09:51, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

If you pass close in front of the muzzle of a gun that size when it's fired the shockwave can easily knock you over and stun you so it can take several minutes before you recover. If you're really unlucky the burning waste propellant can set you afire. John C Kay (talk) 02:32, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikpedia errors becoming an Internet meme: Peter Katin

Is s there a phrase for cases where an error in Wikipedia has ended up being treated as authoritative and widely quoted, with or without attribution? The pianist Peter Katin was educated, as our article now says, based on a published source, was educated at private schools in Balham, Caterham, East Grinstead and Clapham. Up to 17 December 2009 the article said nothing about his schooling but on that date an anonymous editor altered the article to read "He attended Whitgift School in South Croydon..." No reference was given for this change. On Googling for Peter Katin, one finds a number of websites that state that he was educuated at Whitgift, but on examination they nearly all seem to be word for word copies of our article. One of these websites was in turn used as the reference when Peter Katin was added to the list in the "Notable Alumni" section of our Whitgift School article. This list then seems in turn to have been copied lock stock and barrel to the list at Old Whitgiftians website which many people would no doubt consider to be authoritative. I wonder, does this happen often? --rossb (talk) 10:24, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I can't say how often it happens, but it's often enough to have been referenced in popular culture. See also Reliability of Wikipedia#Information loop. Sjö (talk) 10:28, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

xkcd is popular? Darn, do I have to stop reading it? —Tamfang (talk) 08:48, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

It happens often enough that we have had to specifically address the issue in our WP:Verifiability policy (see WP:CIRCULAR). What I would like to find out is how long it takes for a correction to a Wikipedia article to make it onto the internet. Blueboar (talk) 13:34, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

His web site is down but I found a Wayback Machine snapshot, that has a contact page with an email address. Maybe someone could write to it and ask whether he went to Whitgift. Regarding Wikipedia's error rate for this type of info, Roy Rosenzweig examined Wikipedia biographies in 2005[2] and found that while not error-free, they were more accurate than the commercial Encarta encyclopedia, and a Nature assessment of WP science articles found their accuracy comparable to Encyclopedia Britannica. That always seemed like a good target level to me. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 22:37, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

As it happens I'm acquainted with Peter Katin and asked him about this. He e-mailed back and said "So far I've failed to convince Wikipedia that I had nothing to do with Whitgift School! I suppose the major one was Henry Thornton, then known as the South West London Emergency Secondary School, through the forties." (Henry Thornton School is in Clapham.) I mentioned this on Talk:Peter Katin but I imagine it might be classed as Original Research, so have not referenced this on the article itself. --rossb (talk) 22:58, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Yeah, just taking out the info and putting a clarification on the talk page handles the Whitgift issue. WP:FEFS has some more guidance if Peter Katin wants to ask for other corrections or changes. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 00:16, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

That's funny. I love that he emailed back. Awhile back I was looking for an additional source for a wikipedia article I had written and I came across an article that looked promising. Then I noticed that they had apparently just based their article upon my own writing, even using the same wording in several parts, parroting back to me what I had just written. It was pretty funny. I definitely got a kick out of my words being featured in a major newspaper. Also, I'm not sure if anyone has specifically answered your question, but the WP:Circular link added by the other user called it "citogenesis". Bali88 (talk) 21:05, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Ray Kassar

After being accused of insider trading, Ray Kassar settled a case with the relevant government agency, "returning his profits without acknowledging guilt or innocence" according to the article. How/to whom would one return profits? One could figure out who'd bought the shares from him, but since the sale would have a ripple effect, lots of people would have experienced some result of Kassar's sale, and one couldn't return profits to all of them. Alternately, I can imagine him being required to pay the profits as a fine, but that wouldn't exactly be "returning". Nyttend (talk) 14:12, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

He disgorged his profits into a government settlement fund as a fine. The link is to the legal documents. Capitalismojo (talk) 15:56, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

From the SEC boilerplate of such funds: "To receive money from such a settlement fund you make a claim against the fund. To be potentially eligible to participate in the SEC Fund, claimants must submit a completed Proof of Claim Form. Investors whose claims are deemed eligible claimants with so long as those approved transactions calculate to an Eligible Loss under the Plan of Allocation for the SEC Fund. If you are a custodian, trustee or professional investing and claiming on behalf of more than one potentially eligible claimant in a pooled investment fund or entity, you will be required to complete a certification attesting that any distribution you receive will be allocated for the benefit of current or former investors and not for the benefit of management. " Capitalismojo (talk) 16:00, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you; I didn't even know where to start looking. Do you know where you could find a secondary source about this? I'd like to modify the article, but I'm loth to use the legal documents, and Google's returning nothing useful. Nyttend (talk) 19:16, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Glad to help. There's a book Atari, Inc: Business is Fun that talks a little bit about this. I'm not sure its what you need, though. Capitalismojo (talk) 19:35, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Belligerents' diplomacy during WWII

I imagine there must have been some communication links between the Allies and the Axis belligerent nations during WWII no matter how frosty and hostile. But how were they conducted and by whom? And what if the messages were not to the recipients' liking? Was the intermediary in danger of himself being regarded as hostile or partisan? 94.174.140.161 (talk) 16:18, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I believe this kind of thing is typically conducted by diplomats of each side, meeting in neutral territory. See Switzerland during the World Wars; it was probably more relevant during the First than during the Second, because both sides had borders with Switzerland throughout World War I, but it was surrounded by Axis territory during World War II — however, it would have been useful/relevant before France was conquered. The concept of a protecting power may also be relevant: here Country A takes care of Country B's negotiations with Country C. Nyttend (talk) 19:23, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Oops, I failed to read that article myself; note that it has an entire section on Switzerland. I get the impression that it would work as follows:

• Mussolini needs to negotiate something with Roosevelt
• Mussolini calls up the Swiss Embassy in Rome and gives them a message
• Message is sent to Bern, which sends it to Washington
• Swiss Embassy in Washington contacts US State Department and gives them the message
• US State Department receives message and responds in the same manner

Note that Country A can represent Country B in Country C without representing Country C in Country B, but it's entirely possible that Switzerland could have helpe dboth sides this way. Nyttend (talk) 19:30, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

You can see examples of this in the first few notes transcribed here. The first note is from Max Grässli, a Swiss diplomat, to the U.S. Secretary of State, relaying a message from the Japanese government. The next two notes are from the U.S. Secretary of State to Max Grässli, replying to the Japanese government.--Cam (talk) 20:36, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

There is a scene in the 1969 film Battle of Britain in which Baron von Richter (played by Curd Jürgens and apparently a fictionalised portrayal of Joachim von Ribbentrop) pays a visit to the British Embassy in Switzerland, where Sir David Kelly (played by Ralph Richardson), provides a nice cup of tea while von Richter delivers Hitler's terms for Britain's surrender. Whether such a meeting actually took place, I don't know. Alansplodge (talk) 00:32, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Forty Martyrs

I passed a Forty Martyrs church yesterday in Tuscola, Illinois, your typical rural county seat in the midwestern USA. The cornerstone bears the current name of the church, together with a date of 1925. At this time, were churches being dedicated to the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales yet? I see that the martyrs were canonised decades later, but I suppose that there could have been a popular conception of forty martyrs even without official recognition or an official definition of who was included. The only alternative is the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, killed in 320; they seem to be celebrated more in the Orthodox Church, not in the local Catholic parish for a typical Midwestern town (their website gives no indication of being Eastern Rite, for example), and these small-town churches definitely tend to be dedicated to well-known saints or (occasionally) recently canonised ones, rather than a group from 1600 years earlier who are very little known, at least in the West. Nyttend (talk) 21:26, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Oops, never mind; I just discovered this document (see page 2) while looking for information on something else. Apparently they did dedicate it to the ancient martyrs. Nyttend (talk) 21:40, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Only forty? In London, we have had a church dedicated to St. Mary, St. Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins. Apparently, Saint Ursula and her 11,000 handmaidens all had their heads chopped off by those wicked Germans. A church in Cologne marks the spot. Alansplodge (talk) 00:40, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Holy hell, the spot's marked alright. I like how the article calls them "former occupants". InedibleHulk (talk) 11:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

What does Poltergeist III have to do with St Ursula? Did you make a copy/paste error? Nyttend (talk) 11:52, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

No, I was implying digging up all those corpses and using them for decoration may anger a spirit or two. But I'm no theologian. Maybe God's into this sort of whimsy. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:58, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Making weird decorations from other folks' bones is acceptable in some European cultures, see the Sedlec Ossuary and Santa Maria della Concezione. We Britons did away with that sort of thing at the Reformation and it seems a bit odd or even repulsive to us. A more recent example is the Douaumont Ossuary where you can peer into windows at the bones of those who were dismembered during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Alansplodge (talk) 13:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Medieval theologians decided that you only needed your skull and thigh bones to be resurrected on Judgement Day - hence the skull and crossbones motif. Being interred close to holy relics was believed to hasten your entry into the celestial gates on the last day, so there were funerary guilds (which we don't seem have an article about) that you could join and your subscriptions would buy your bones a place in the guild's charnel house and the services of a priest to say Requiem Masses for your soul while you did your time in purgatory. So for medieval Catholics at least, having your bones made into interior décor was quite a desirable objective. Alansplodge (talk) 17:34, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Well. No harm, no foul, then. At least by Medieval European human standards. It does seem they're still the authority on Church matters. For what it's worth, I have a British queen, and personally don't have a problem with it. Corpses aren't people anymore. Just figured with all the reverence attached to "proper Christian burial", the designer may have sinned, somehow. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:03, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Apparently, funeral guilds still exist. And here I thought there were only two acolytes left. (On that note, these guys are certainly not winning any St. Peter points.) InedibleHulk (talk) 23:19, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Ancient Peru

Why did the first American civilization develop in Peru? What special conditions (climate, geography, etc) explain its development?--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 22:42, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

To answer your question, you'll want to start at the Wikipedia article titled Norte Chico civilization and then follow links from there to more in-depth scholarly studies. --Jayron32 22:58, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

What is the real per capita income of the USA?

I'm doing some research, and there seem to be different figures for the per capita income in the USA:

The 13.7 trillion here would make personal income about $43,217 per capita for a population of 317 million. The figure is confirmed here.

However, the figure here is $28,051[3].

Can someone tell me why the figures are different?

It's easy to get median income for "families" but I'm looking for per capita average income of every man woman and child in the USA. I'm not sure where to get authoritative figures. B^e——C_ritical 23:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm guessing that your answer and the Census Bureau's answers are both right, and the difference is that you and they are measuring different things. You've calculated the mean income, but Census Bureau financial demographics generally seem to pay attention to median income; see median and arithmetic mean if you're unclear what I mean. If one person earns $1,100,000,000 annually, and ten people earn $10, $9, $8, etc. annually, the mean income is going to be $100,000,005, but the median income is going to be $6. Nyttend (talk) 01:38, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I think I get it... tell me if I'm right: the CB is calculating the per capita median income, not the per capita income? And this is different from the usual median income we hear about of about $52,000 because it's for individuals. Half of individuals have income less than $28,000 and half have more? B^e——C_ritical 02:31, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'm not entirely sure what they mean, either. Tons of people (most children, lots of elderly, prisoners, etc.) don't work and have no income. Are they counted toward the median? Or does the median only track people with a non-zero income? As far as the CB is calculating the per capita median income, not the per capita income, not quite: they're tracking one definition of the per capita income, and you're tracking another. Nyttend (talk) 02:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Right, well, as long as I'm not going to be wrong if I just divide the total income by the population (: It does seem to me that the figures are recited without explanation, but that the per capita average income is much more revealing than the median figures. And in fact the median figures seem misleading to the average reader. I know they were for me. When you hear about the median income you get an impression of how rich the country is that is far lower than the reality. Thanks for your help! B^e——C_ritical 14:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

A competent economist would be extremely unlikely to use the mean in this case, because (contrary to your understanding) the mean is more misleading than the median. This is because income is distributed in a highly skewed way: changes in the very small number of very high values have a misleadingly high effect on changes in the mean, but not in the median. For more details, see our article on the median. RomanSpa (talk) 09:32, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that, and that's why the mean is so much more revealing: the median makes it look as if the society can't afford stuff, whereas the mean shows us just how rich the society is, and how relatively poor most people are. Any competent economist would be at pains to make this apparent. B^e——C_ritical 14:10, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

We do, but there are better ways to do it. The problem with citing a mean is that it doesn't come close to describing what life is like for most people. Certainly there are weaknesses to using a median, but because of the skewed nature of the income distribution there are more people whose income is "close" to the median than there are people whose income is "close" to the mean. (You'll notice that I've avoided defining "close", because there's a complicated debate about how we define this term, but it doesn't matter for this discussion. If you're not already convinced, visual inspection of the distribution should prove suggestive.) The purpose of a good statistic is to communicate something clearly to the audience as simply as possible, and the median does this. That is, we can say "people's median income is X", and more people will think to themselves "yes, on the basis of my own income and those of the people I know that sounds about right". However, if we say "people's mean (or average) income is Y" we end up with a lot of people thinking "no, that doesn't sound right, based on me and people I know", and then we have to engage in a complicated discussion about income inequality and quantiles, and we end up having to explain medians to people anyway. Along the way we lose a lot of our audience because their numeracy is poor. Your approach might have rhetorical advantages if you're speaking to a numerate audience, but it's not generally useful. '"people's median income is X", and more people will think to themselves "yes, on the basis of my own income and those of the people I know that sounds about right".'

There's an additional complication: your contention that "the mean shows us just how rich society is" is wrong. Suppose there is a new public works project available to the USA that costs about $110 billion. Looking at it from an "average" point of view, we see that it would cost each citizen about $345. For many people this is a substantial sum, and it would be difficult to get consensus to spend this money. Yet Congress routinely spends many multiples of this with the ready assent of the electorate (Medicare and Medicaid together cost eight times as much), because of the differential tax contributions to the national budget of different income groups, not to mention the many other sources of revenue that can be used for spending purposes (e.g. corporation taxes). To use a simple average in such a situation is a severe over-simplification, and does not helpfully describe what actually happens when spending decisions are made, which is why we generally don't describe things in this way. The mean does not show us how rich society is, because it turns out that society is not full of average people, but is a complex interplay of different contributions and costs. RomanSpa (talk) 15:25, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

By the way, the public works project I mentioned is an "Apollo Moonshot Program": although there were certainly some people who moaned about the price of Apollo at the time (I've adjusted everything to current prices, more or less) it was a straightforward job to get agreement to pay for it (at least compared to the current intransigence of the usual suspects). RomanSpa (talk) 15:25, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

"The problem with citing a mean is that it doesn't come close to describing what life is like for most people." Yes, I'm sure the Gini coefficient is better in some ways, but the fact that the mean describes something totally outside most people's experience is its strong point, not its weak point. "there are more people whose income is "close" to the median than there are people whose income is "close" to the mean." Yes, so we describe a nation that is "like most people's experience" so the inequality is hidden by numbers. "The purpose of a good statistic is to communicate something clearly to the audience as simply as possible, and the median does this." It communicates something false to most people: that their income is close to the average. People don't know what "median" means. "'"people's median income is X", and more people will think to themselves "yes, on the basis of my own income and those of the people I know that sounds about right".'" WTF kind of knowledge is that? It's called FALSE. " Looking at it from an "average" point of view, we see that it would cost each citizen about $345. For many people this is a substantial sum, and it would be difficult to get consensus to spend this money." Depending on just how progressive the tax system is, you're right, but putting it in terms of a percentage of an average per capita income would be less misleading. This is a situation where the median would be better. B^e——C_ritical 16:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I believe I remarked above that "I've avoided defining "close", because there's a complicated debate about how we define this term", which is why I tried to couch my discussion in rather lax terms, precisely because I didn't want to get into the philosophical and economic complexities. As you say: "WTF kind of knowledge is that? It's called FALSE." Well, up to a point. You may wish to consider truth in economics as described by a Coherence theory of truth, and attempt to reconcile this with the reasoning that guides Constructivist epistemology: that's roughly where the current thinking is. I think we're generally very unwise to blindly adopt a correspondence-theoretic approach to truth in economics, for the obvious reason that there's no independent test for the truth of any statement (that is, we can check the statement "the sky is blue" by looking at the sky, but we can't in reality do the same sort of thing with a statement like "median income is X", because we do not have a direct apprehension of median income). My aim was to explain a difficult idea in a simple way, and in general terms my comments seem broadly valid. If you have a better way of describing how economic actors perceive the environment in which they act you've probably got a good chance of getting a nice paper out of it. RomanSpa (talk) 17:45, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I think you're talking about truth as a fuzzy and relative concept not an absolute, and I definitely agree with that. But that doesn't mean that there's no truth or falsehood either. Maybe median income is a good way of stating things in a world where it communicates a correct truth range (a general impression that could be said to be generally accurate). This might have been fine up till the 70s or 80s when productivity gains were being more fairly distributed. But right now in the current context it practically makes one want to formulate a conspiracy theory. Median income is as you say what the average man will think the average person makes, and in the current context this is far enough outside any reasonable idea of accuracy that it constitutes a lie. Don't you think? B^e——C_ritical 19:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

To show this, you would use the total wealth of the nation, and some measure of how unevenly divided that wealth is. Those two together show that the rich are, or aren't, contributing a reasonable amount. In particular, if wealth and income inequality are both going up, then more progressive taxes are needed to prevent that nation from becoming an oligarchy. StuRat (talk) 14:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I was well aware of income disparity, but still knowing the average income was eye-opening in that it shows that we can well afford many things that we are told we cannot afford. I believe the average tax rate is about 23%, which for an average family earning $170,000 or a single person earning $42,000 is very affordable and could be raised. Thus knowing the average shows that there is no lack of money. B^e——C_ritical 16:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Careful here. If a flat tax rate of 23% were implemented, that would be a disaster, as a good portion of the lower income people would be unable to pay it, and those with higher incomes would pay even less than they do now, both resulting in less income for the government. This is why a progressive tax rate is critical, if the government is to be properly funded. StuRat (talk) 18:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes a flat tax would be a disaster, but it is revealing that a average tax rate of 23% in the context of an average income of $170,000 for a family of 4 leaves very ample room to raise taxes. We could almost double tax revenues in a progressive tax system. B^e——C_ritical 18:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

[outdent] Median household income last year was about $52,000. [4] I don't know where you are finding the $170,000 figure. That is probably above the 90th percentile. With an average of 2.6 people per household [5], that works out to a median of $20,000 per household member. Marco polo (talk) 19:48, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

HAHA, TO RomanSpa, You see what I mean? Marco polo, the average income is the total income divided by the population. You think it's the 90th percentile because if income were equally divided, everyone would be in the 90th percentile (if you're correct). B^e——C_ritical 20:16, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

$170,000 may be the mean income. That it is so much higher than the median says a lot about income disparity in the United States. Obviously if income were equally divided, everyone would not be in the 90th percentile or 10th deciles; percentiles and deciles would be meaningless as terms of comparison. Anyway, it is mistaken to pretend that tax policy can be based on $170,000 "average" incomes when few taxpayers have incomes near that. Marco polo (talk) 23:13, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

The mean income would be very useful for calculating taxes, as it gives a basis for creating a progressive tax structure. If you didn't know the mean, you wouldn't know how high to set the tax rates for those with income lower and higher than the average, in order to produce a more equitable society and stimulate the economy maximally. So taxes can indeed be based on the average income because the average income is properly speaking the primary reference point. B^e——C_ritical 00:23, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

As you've noticed, median and centiles are used in discussing income distribution. It isn't misleading to refer to the median as "average income" because the median is just as much an average as the mean is. See any introductory statistics textbook. If you want to get across to a non-specialist readership what it means you can say that half of households earn more and half earn less. There is absolutely no reason why the mean can't also be calculated and referred to. A "competent economist" will find no problem using both. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:04, 14 May 2014 (UTC)