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I don't think that darklajid can be the one downvoting -- at least not your post replying to him. I suspect you're being downvoted (and not by me) for suggesting that a statewide missing child alert is warranted in response to a kid being spotted alone in a parking lot for a few minutes, which is the kind of thing that people are mad about in this thread.

> In California, there are about 1900 cases of family child abduction and 50 cases of child abduction by a stranger every year. the chances that any given suspicious episode like this will be a child abduction are thus about 1 in 5000 - a remote probability, but of a sufficiently severe nature that it has to be followed up.

Hmm, what "math" did you just do to come up with 1 in 5000?



I'm not suggesting that, and you're being disingenuous for ignoring the fact of the person driving the car not matching the id of the vehicle owner, which I have repeatedly pointed out as the suspicious circumstance.

Hmm, what "math" did you just do to come up with 1 in 5000?

Population of CA is ~38 million, of which ~24% are minors, or approximately 10 million children. 10m/~2000 abductions a year in the state = 5000.

http://www.childabductions.org/ Annual abduction rates http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html CA census data

Are you happy now?


Your math is broken. It doesn't even have the right units to be a probability (children/(abudctions/year)).




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