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Correlation Between Homeless Population And Crime Rates

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Correlation is a method of testing relationships between quantitative variables or categorical variables. Therefore, correlation is a measure of how things are related. Furthermore, correlation is one of the most useful and most statistics. Correlation can tell whether the relationship between variables is positive or negative. Also, correlation can tell about the strength of relationships. Correlation in statistics can be quantified and assigned a number where zero is “no correlation” and 1 is “perfect correlation.” Furthermore, correlation is indistinguishable from causation and does exist (Statistics How To, 2013). However, causation is the act of initiating something to occur or exist. Unfortunately, causation can be tremendously hard to prove, since what one is trying to prove is 100% correlation (Statistics How To, 2014). …show more content…
Today, companies invest large sums of money in studies in hopes of finding casual links between events. However, casual links are often exaggerated and important nuances are overlooked by the industry of science journalism. Therefore, the information provided from the studies and statistics can be distorted (Barrowman, 2014). The One situation where people tend to jump to conclusions is the relationship between the homeless population and crime rates. One may say that a high homeless population leads to higher crime rates, or a high crime rate leads to a higher homeless population. However, these are two different statements and correlation does not indicate that either is true. Furthermore, the cause of a high homeless population of a high crime rate could stem from a third variable such as alcohol, drug abuse, or unemployment (Stack Exchange,

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