OT: Seven Deadly Sins - and K-State is involved

Submitted by boliver46 on

Apparently Kansas State researchers had a lot of time on their hands to try and quantify the subjective...and have plotted out the regionalization of the seven deadly sins: Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, Envy, Wrath, Pride, and my personal favorite: Lust.

Not a lot of detail provided regarding the methodology used - but interesting to think about.  I'd be curious how they got to these results by my takeaway is those of us near Ann Arbor are apparently a bunch of envious, greedy bastards.

Oh, and since Brad Pitt turned 50 today and he's in Se7en - thought this was interesting as well. 

Link

EDIT: Just something to distract from the vitriol on some of the other threads.  Perhaps there IS more wrath up this way than K-State found...

GoWings2008

December 18th, 2013 at 10:10 AM ^

Now let me tell you about the 7 Deadly Sins:

1. Pride...Thou shalt not have pride in thy neighbor.

2. Coveting...Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.

3. Lust...Thou shalt not lust after his neighbor's wife.

4. Anger...Do not be angry with your neighbor's wife.

5. Gluttony...Do not eat thy neighbor's wife's ........popcorn.

6. Envy...Do not envy your neighbor's wife.

7. Sloth...Do not be a sloth.

And the eighth deadly sin is............PIZZA!



 

Tuebor

December 18th, 2013 at 10:23 AM ^

The methodology for greed seems to be biased against large cities.  Any large cluster of population is going to have huge income disparities.  The fact that this map looked more like population density made me think perhaps they need a better methodology. 

 

From the article "Greed was calculated by comparing average incomes with the total number of inhabitants living beneath the poverty line." 

 

Since they used crime rates in many of the other maps perhaps for greed they should have used the rates of white collar or financial crimes like fraud, identity theft, etc.  Boards thoughts?

 

EDIT: Is Seattle really more greedy than St. Louis?

Tuebor

December 18th, 2013 at 10:39 AM ^

But on a county wide map the current methodology targets areas where there is a diverse socioeconomic population as more greedy.  If there were an arbitrary county line between areas where on one side everyone made 100K and on the other everyone made 10K then neither county would show up as greedy because in the high income county there is nobody under the poverty level and in the low income county everyone is under the poverty level. 

 

It does make for an interesting discussion though.  Maybe you could factor in charitable giving as a percentage of income?

Tuebor

December 18th, 2013 at 11:43 AM ^

Urban areas have a much higher average income and to a lesser degree more people living under the poverty level than rural areas. They might as well have made a map of relative urbanness of each county.  I guess I think they should be trying to use methods that factor out population density or raw population size.  And comparing average income to number of people living under the poverty line is going to dramatically bias you towards larger denser population centers.  It amuses me that all of SE Michigan is "Greedy" except Huron and Bay County.  The other maps were created using FBI crime statistics per capita.  That is an excellent statistical method but choosing a method that is very correlated to population density strikes me as poor.

 

Thanks for the discussion. 

 

EDIT: I suppose the researchers had to distinguish between envy and greed somehow.

LSAClassOf2000

December 18th, 2013 at 10:19 AM ^

Without knowing it apparently, I moved right next door to envy, greed and sloth. I also moved next door to someone who - for about five years now - has had a 1988 Jeep Cherokee parked right in the middle of his backyard and simply mows around it, but that could be unrelated to focus of this study. 

boliver46

December 18th, 2013 at 10:49 AM ^

to ask.  Neighbor did exactly that.  We were excited his "RV" left his driveway - then saw that he had taken the fence down in the back to allow him to park the RV in the back yard.  Awesomeness.  

He also never mowed...so we were plagued with rodents who enjoyed cavorting in the tall grass and probably in his engine block.  Glad to no longer live there.

Former_DC_Buck

December 18th, 2013 at 10:21 AM ^

It goes against everything ESPN tells me about the SEC and the B1G. 

We should be red for Sloth because we are slow. 

We should be red for Envy because we are not the SEC.

We should be red for Lust because we Lust for the kids from SEC country.   

KBLOW

December 18th, 2013 at 11:05 AM ^

Kind of fun map, but the interpretations of the sins are stuck in a decidedly modern mindset. Obviously because 2013, but for instance, Sloth was originally an issue with spiritual laziness (not working to live as Christ) and Gluttony was about selfishness in almost any material desire rather than just over-comsumption of food.

taistreetsmyhero

December 18th, 2013 at 12:29 PM ^

is the least insightful one. but, if you're trying to estimate a sin by one exemplifying measure, i think over-consumption of food is a good indicator of gluttony, if not the most efficient measure of the whole bunch.

EDIT:  that being said, it obviously ignores the whole "plastic people" stereotypes who are super image-concerned and spend hella money on other trifle things. but, the assumption of this metric for gluttony is that the number of people belonging to the category of "gluttonous but not over-eaters" is not thaaaaaaat much higher than the category of "over-eaters," and i'd agree with that assumption.