Statistical Hocus-Pocus

[Shada Dukal]

I have always wondered how exactly it was calculated that 10, 000, 000 Bajorans were killed during the Cardassian Annexation and it seems to me that no one has calculated it, or tried to back it up with statistics and methodology. It simply was a good, round figure that the Sisko and the Bajorans could parrot with pathos because the writers wanted the Star Trek humanism preserved. I don’t approve of such a sloppy approach, especially when one party accuses another party of alleged wrongdoings.

According to Memory Beta and “Star Trek Star Charts” by Geoffrey Mandel and Doug Drexler, the population of Bajor is 3,8 billion. In 2016, the Earth population is 7,5 billion people, 55,3 – 56 million people die each year. So the population of Bajor comprises roughly a half of the contemporary Earth population and that is why I will reduce the number of the people who die worldwide by half. Since the number fluctuates, I have adopted 55,3 million as a starting point for this calculation.

http://www.medindia.net/patients/calcul ... -clock.asp

http://www.ecology.com/birth-death-rates/

The resulting figure is 27, 650, 000 and this is the number of the Bajorans who die each year if the population is about 3,8 billion, this is simply a mid-interval parameter. If the annual figure is multiplied by 50, this makes 1, 382, 500, 000 and shows how many Bajorans died for 50 years, from 2319 to 2369.

It is never clarified what statistical methodology the Bajorans and the Sisko apply, but we assume that 10 million Bajorans died due to the Cardassian Annexation, this is canon information. If we subtract 10, 000, 000 from 1, 382, 500, 000, this means that the remaining 1, 372, 500, 000 dead Bajorans died from causes unrelated to the Cardassians. 10 000 000 divided into 50 years makes 200 000 per year. 200 000 Bajorans planet-wide is an extremely low figure compared to the annual mortality figure.

A mortality rate measures the frequency of death cases in a defined population during a specified interval. In order to calculate the crude death rate the annual mortality figure is divided by the population for the mid-interval. The decimal is then multiplied by 1000 or 100, 000 to show the number of dead individuals per 1000 or 100, 000. So if we apply this formula, 27, 650, 000 (the annual number of deaths on Bajor) will be the numerator and 3, 800, 000, 000 (the mid-interval population of Bajor) will be the denominator. The decimal is 0.0072763157894 and when we multiply it by 1000, we see that the death rate was 7.27631578947, or 7 Bajorans per 1000. Such a death rate is lower than the death rates in countries such as Canada, Afghanistan, Norway, or Somalia, low-income and high-income contemporary countries, two of them recent conflict zones. These figures lead to the conclusion that living on Bajor during the Annexation was quite safe. The link below shows the death rate by country.

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countr ... y-country/

Still, we are interested in the correlation between the Cardassian presence on Bajor and the number of deaths attributable to the Cardassians. This means that we have to calculate the cause-specific death rate. The annual mortality figure (200, 000 Bajorans) is the numerator and the population number is the denominator (3, 800, 000, 000). The resulting decimal is 0.0000526315789 and when we multiply it by 1000, we realize that 0.05263157895 Bajorans per 1000 died due to Cardassian-related causes. Since the Cardassians could not possibly kill a decimal fraction of anyone no matter how hard they tried, we have to multiply 0.0000526315789 by 100, 000 to obtain a real number before the decimal separator. This number is 5.263157895. This means that 5 Bajorans per 100,000 died due to the Cardassian presence there. The link below explains the methodology for calculating these figures.

http://www.cdc.gov/ophss/csels/dsepd/ss ... tion3.html

In order to assess whether this figure is too high or not, I have found out that according to 2004 World Health Organization Global Burden of Disease Study the worldwide rate of unintentional injuries is 61 per 100,000 population per year. When standardized per 100,000 population, the death rate is nearly double in low-and-medium-income countries versus high-income countries (65 vs. 35 per 100,000). These figures show that the chances of a Bajoran to be killed by the Cardassians on Bajor were much slimmer than our current chances to die in a road accident, to fell off a ladder while repairing the roof, to experience an electric shock, exposure to noxious substances, or to be mugged in the street.

http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/conten ... 66170c2023

For the sake of comparison, my country, Bulgaria, has an area of 110, 879 square kilometers and currently ranks 3rd in the world in terms of crude death rate according to World Population Review. According to a CIA estimate for 2016, it ranks second. WPR says that 300 people die every day, which translates to 109, 500 people annually. If so many real people can die in such a small country under the benevolent care of the local governmental structures, 200 000 Bajorans on an entire planet sounds like a pretty acceptable loss.

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countr ... opulation/

Here is another interesting statistical fact, the source is listed after the quotation:

“Bulgaria's population declined from a peak of 9,009,018 in 1989 and since 2001, has lost yet another 600,000 people, according to 2011 census preliminary figures to no more than 7.3 million, further down to 7,245,000. This represents a 24.3% decrease in total population since the peak, and a -0.82% annual rate in the last 10 years. Bulgaria and Latvia are the only countries in the world to have a smaller population today than 1950.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline

It turns out that living on Bajor during the Cardassian Annexation is a less traumatic experience than living in Bulgaria under several democratic governments and the EU. That is why I think we should leave the European Union, join the Cardassian Union, and elect Gul Dukat for President. We want him to improve the healthcare, raise the food rations, and take measures to decrease the mortality rate by at least 20%. We also hope that he will open a lot of mines, ore processing facilities, metallurgical floatation plants and steel mills and will solve the problems with the unemployment and deindustrialization.

[Gul Khold]

Basically, it concludes that, according to canon, it is much, much safer to live in Cardassian-occupied Bajor than in quite many places of our own world.

I love when shows and historians throw around numbers without looking deeply into them.