• vortic@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    6 days ago

    Here is the actual report.

    I started reading it but am out of time for now. I’m fairly sure that the 93% number is number of known shoplifting incidents and is unrelated to the value of the items. I’d need to read more to be sure.

    I do wonder whether the dollar numbers are inflation adjusted or not. I’m sure that info is in the report.

    • Fermion@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      6 days ago

      An increase in the number of known shoplifting incidents would be conflated with increasing surveillance. It would be hard to distinguish observability vs actual increases.

        • Fermion@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          4 days ago

          Inventory would measure $ worth of goods missing, but wouldn’t ascertain the number of incidents that caused those losses. So the $/incident and incident count figures should be treated as if they have high uncertainty even if the $ figure is accurate.

    • huppakee@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      6 days ago

      Thanks, I continued looking further into it as well and found another article on it, which states:

      Retailers reported a 93% increase in annual shoplifting incidents in 2023 compared to 2019.

      So I believe you are right. Guess op proves that often you can have either interesting text with poorly supported numbers, or boring text with well supported facts. Too bad though, cause i did actually enjoy reading the article (so extra shout-out to op for sharing).