No. The numbers are meaningless unless you know the number of people in the military each year.
For example if in the year 1986 the military had 1,000,000 members and there were 1,984 deaths that would equate to a .001984% death rate.
And if in the year 2002 the military had 750,000 members and there were 1,007 deaths that would equate to a .00134267 death rate.
It is just simple math and with out knowing the total number of deaths and the population the numbers are meaningless.
“No. The numbers are meaningless unless you know the number of people in the military each year.”
Each number represents the lives of American service-people. Hardly “meaningless”.
This thread is not about percentages, ratios, or denominators. It’s about the NUMBER of American service-members lost each year.
Even you should be able to grasp that but you seem to have a hard time grasping anything that conflicts with your preconceived notions.
The number of active duty military fatalities not meaningless. The percentage of military personnel who died is not meaningless. They are both important to answering different questions, addressing different issues.
No one is saying that people aren't dying in Iraq. What they are saying is that the numbers of military deaths are not unpredicented, even in peacetime. If you are trying to answer a different question, you analyze the data differently.
Sometimes rates matter more than absolute numbers. Sometimes they don't.
That is correct. Some people perhaps didn't go to college or are not too bright on math and statistics.