I’m just playing with charts and data presentation. If I graphed the number of people shot in NYC and the percent change on the previous year, it’s a challenge when a number that is between -20 and +7 suddenly goes to 100best I can come up with is something like this. Without 2020 it’s much easier to do. Though without…
Tag: rising crime
Murder down for whites but not blacks
The 2018 murder rate is down from the previous two years, but higher than we’ve seen in 6 of the past 10 years. Last year’s murder rate is the same as 2015. And 2009! And yet I keep hearing every year that violence is down. So what’s this trend? And sort of related, why do some people insist on the…
Pushing the Ideological Narrative
I updated the Brennan Center’s crime report from 2016, to update it for 2018. I still have this urge to show how goofy their methods are. Why? Because, the authors are still cited by reputable journalists as experts, despite never acknowledging or correcting their past efforts to intentionally mislead journalists and the public. It’s advocacy data-analysis. It’s unethical, wrong, and…
Two-year homicide increase in cities
Now that the UCR data for last year is out, here is the homicide rate increase in cities over 400,000 people. This is two year, 2014-2016. Homicide is up in 40 of the 48 largest cities.
Still trying to explain…
What’s wrong with the Brennan Center’s analysis? There are many problems. But here are a few: 1) They take a non-random sample (which isn’t bad in and of itself) and then A) don’t tell the reader in the text and B) state conclusions as if the sample were a random sample (every data point equal chance of being picked), representative…
Quality Policing Podcast: Interview With Jeff Asher
There’s another quality policing podcast in which I talk to data analyst Jeff Asher about the Brennan Center’s latest report on crime. Asher had posted this thread about methodological problems in their data and analysis. Brennan has a new report out showing murder down 2.5% nationally, but there are some major issues with that finding. 1) The figures cited aren’t…
Data presentation and the crime rise in Baltimore
Data presentation fascinates me because it’s both art and science. There’s no right way to do it; it depends on both hard data, good intentions, and interpretive ability. Data can be manipulated and misinterpreted, both honestly and dishonestly. And any chart is potentially yet another step removed from whatever “truth” the hard data has. Where I’m going isn’t exactly technical,…
“A small price to pay”?
Last postI presented the depressing fact that at current level of violence, the chance for a man in Baltimore’s Western District to live to age of 35 without being murdered is just 93% [updated to include 2018 data]. Yes, more than 7 percent of black men in the Western District will be murdered unless Baltimore can get a grip on…
Too much to bear
Back when I wrote Cop in the Hood, I was horrified to figure out that 11.6 percent of men in the Eastern District were being murdered (see the footnote on pp. 219-222). [Updated to include 2018 data and more accurate population figures.] From 2015 through 2018, 226 people were murdered in Baltimore’s Western District. 145 were black men age 18…
Murder still trending up
Murder in 2017 continues to go up. (The increase is at slower pace compared to the previous two years, but that is minor consolation.) At what point do you sound the alarm? Yes, the murder rate is still lower than when it was high, but the increase since 2014 is equal (or may surpass) the largest homicide increase in America…