[R] Off-Topic: Crime Statistics Don't Pay

[John Kane]

And you don't want to know about some of the other problems with the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.  IRRC, they are fine for what the FBI intended but a lot of reseachers don't read the data descriptions as closely as they should.

John Kane
Kingston ON Canada


> -----Original Message-----
> From: gunter.berton at gene.com
> Sent: Fri, 4 May 2012 09:49:15 -0700
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Off-Topic: Crime Statistics Don't Pay
> 
> WARNING: COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC -- Nothing to do with R.
> 
> I thought readers of this list might enjoy the following. The link to
> the full article is at the bottom. I hope this is not "too"
> inappropriate.
> 
> -------
> Overconfidence in crime statistics doesn’t pay. In a new study, a team
> of criminologists makes the case that reported crime rates should
> acknowledge uncertainty in the data. The research demonstrates that
> rankings of cities as safer or more dangerous — which can influence
> tourism and tax spending — can be highly misleading.
> 
> “If you look at crime rates from year to year and you see a change,
> there’s a fundamental ambiguity in whether that change is caused by a
> real change in crime, a change in reporting or some of both,” says
> criminologist Robert Brame of the University of North Carolina at
> Charlotte, a coauthor of the new study. “Our position is we should own
> that. There’s ambiguity here and we should learn to deal with it.”
> ---
> 
> Aside from, "Well, duhhh...," my reaction was:  what other misleading
> "data" are being thrown around in the public domain whose uncertainty
> has been blithely ignored.... Don't answer that!
> 
> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/340450/title/Crime_numbers_may_mislead_
> 
> Cheers,
> Bert
> 
> --
> 
> Bert Gunter
> Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics
> 
> Internal Contact Info:
> Phone: 467-7374
> Website:
> http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm
> 
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