Letter from the editor: The people who make up the secretive world of organised crime are known for their ruthlessness, they're known for their riches and occasionally they become known for their strategic brilliance during war time. They are not typically known for academic genius or scientific endeavour.

None the less; the times in which we live are truly momentous for Science. Technological advancement is at a fever pitch. Just last decade, through the work of men (and grudgingly we must also include women for legal reasons) in white coats, the world was brought the wonders of such revolutionary gadgets as the electric iron and the vacuum cleaner; domestic appliances which are sure to change the way we live our lives over the coming years.

In labs across the world the exciting field of sub-atomic physics is just beginning to unfold before our eyes and recent medical advances such as the discovery of vitamins C and E, as well as the wonder drug that is penicillin look set to transform the way every single one of us experiences the future.

Now, to the crunch of the matter.

We here at the Mafia Institute for Shoddily Half-baked, Malformed and utterly Asinine Scientific Hunches (MISH-MASH) understand that as members of La Cosa Nostra, we are - or at least should be - interested in making money. Business is what we do. And as business men, we at MISH-MASH feel that we ought to be embracing the new fields of Science lest we miss out on inspiration which could potentially result in profit.

Knowledge is power people!

"The Scientific Mafiosa" will aim to be a series of scientific articles targeted at the organised crime world and published for free on behalf of MISH-MASH for the betterment of Mafiosa's everywhere.

Yours,

Fredio
(Director of research at MISH-MASH)











Article - 1

Title - On the link between location and longevity

Abstract - Our researchers took a wander down to the local Funeral Home and requested (with a little forceful persuasion) access to the obituaries logs held there. On semi-careful, almost certainly flawed statistical analysis, our researchers have shown that a mafiosa is likely to last longest in the city of Philadelphia, whereas his (or her) chances of survival are lowest in the Big Apple.

Methodology - Taken from a sample consisting of the first three pages of the obituaries book supplied to us on Feb 13, '10 18:00 by the Funeral Director, our researchers noted by home city, all the deaths of Mafiosa's associated with or part of any established Mafia family. This was then compared against the total number of Mafiosa's operating in each city to provide survival odds.

Results -
City____No_of_Deaths____Total_Crew_Size_________Survival_Ratio
LV______7_______________120_____________________1/17
CHI_____5_______________96______________________1/19
NY______17______________173_____________________1/10
LA______4_______________44______________________1/11
NO______4_______________53______________________1/27
PH______1_______________76______________________1/76

Conclusion - The conclusion drawn by MISH-MASH on this topic is that its founder's self-preservation instinct had clearly gone awry when he pledged his loyalty to the families of Chicago (extremely happy with his choice though he is), as over the next 3 days it would seem he has a 1 in 19 chance of dying by some means.

Mafiosa's looking for a long life might do well to follow the scientific evidence and head for Philly where the death rate is a meagre 1 in 76 over a three day period, whereas those looking to live life fast and dangerous would do well to move to NY's busy streets where the rewards are huge, but the chances of survival are much slimmer.

Theories for this disparity in death rates are numerous, though our researchers consider it likely that the variable temperatures in Philadelphia make living there exciting enough as it is without the need for more dangerous pursuits. Living in New York however with its boringly consistent temperature is theorized to encourage more risqué behaviour.

It should be added that there is absolutely no evidence to back any of the aforementioned weather based conclusions up as data was not available for this study.

It should be added as extra that Chicago's 1 in 19 survival rate is theorized to be as a direct result of Godfather Iota's love of fast-food outlets and the example that this love of junk food sets to the younger Chicago breed, causing damaging cholestoral issues.

Peer review notes:

The editor at The New England Journal of Organized Crime Dynamics
has provided me with a copy of your research for peer review.  I've
submitted it to a Chi-squared test at p=0.05 and df= 5 giving a
tabulated c2=11.07 to test for statistical significance.

Expected values are calculated as the Number of National Deaths
for the sample period (34) / Total Population of all cities (542)
giving an expected death rate of 0.06

City________Observed______Expected________(O-E)__________(O-E)2 _________(O-E)2/E

LV___________7____________7.2__________-0.2____________0.04____________0.0055

CH___________5____________5.76________-0.76____________0.58____________0.1000

NY__________17___________10.38_________6.62___________43.82____________4.22

LA__________4_____________2.64_________1.36_____________1.85___________0.70

NO_________4_____________3.18__________0.82____________0.67____________0.21

PH__________1____________4.56__________-3.56____________12.67__________2.78

__________________________________________________________________X2 = 8.915

df=5

p=0.05

c2  = 11.07 > X2 = 8.915 therefore we
must reject the hypothesis that there is any significant difference in
one's chances of survival from one city to the next (Good news for New
York).

On a more personal note Fredio, it's nice to see science being brought into our streets, keep up the good work.

Lucretia reads the publication and wrinkles her nose. What is this crap being passed off as science nowadays? Someone will need to set things straight for them.

Excuse me, but I'd like to add another batch of peer review. I don't believe a Chi-squared test is the appropriate manner to analyze results in this case, as interesting as they may be. A standard Chi-squared test breaks down in circumstances where many of the observed events have a low expected value. This would be one of those instances. Being that the approximation of the distribution is inaccurate in this case, there's not a whole lot we can do with the Chi-squared test in this case. Oh, and the survival ratio for New Orleans in the original paper is wrong, it should be about 2/27, not 1/27. 1/13 would work too.

A few of the gathered mobsters stare at Lucretia and wonder where she got this knowledge of statistics. She glares at them and responds. What are you staring at? You never seen a chick who's good at math or something?

Yes, I did make a mistake, you're supposed to merge cells if expected values are less than 5 for more than 1/5 of the sets of data, very observant.  When I finished and realized this mistake, I honestly didn't expect anyone to notice.

However, merging the cells with expected values of < 5 would have resulted in a gain of only a few tenths, which wouldn't have pushed it into the realm of significance, so I left it.

I thought my name was mentioned loads in this speech.

Apparently not. :(

The numbers lie they always do! Anyone can skew them to match their goal hence Vito_T's error and marginal difference could cause a black eye on mathematicians everywhere. Vito please take your pocket protector off and throw it away you have lost your scholarly right to wear it.

On another note very cool stats to see and _____ You are mentioned everywhere and just don't know it!