The Justice Department in the state of Texkansahomatucky has asked Stat Monkees to create a map that highlights the high crime counties in the state. In order to complete this task, we were given the county name, county population, county area, the county code, and the number of occurrences of seven different categories of crime: (a) murder, (b) rape, (c) robbery, (d) aggravated assault, (e) burglary, (f) larceny, and (g) motor vehicle theft for each of the counties (As shown in Table 1). The following analysis implies a simple quantitative summary of a data set that has been collected. It will help understand the data set and explain the required details that helped put this data in perspective.
Metric Description
Firstly, Stat Monkees decided on a specific metric based on population density and total crime for splitting the counties into high and low crime counties. Population density was determined by dividing the population of each county by its area (sq. mi). Secondly, we added all the crimes of each county to arrive at the total crime for each county. For example, in York county the total crime of 144 reported in 2012 was derived by adding up murder (0), rape (1), robbery (5), aggravated assault (11), burglary (25), Larceny (94), motor vehicle theft (8). Finally, in order to determine the crime rates for each county in the state of Texkansahomatucky, we basically use the formula: (Total crime for each county)/(Population density for each county) For example, Lake county crime rate of 11.96 reported in 2012 was derived by dividing Lake county total crime (54160)/population density (4528). (Table 2)
The high crime/low crime threshold we decided to use was the mean, also known as the average. This was calculated by adding together the total crime of all the counties and dividing by the number of counties in the state. This average turned out to be 13.46, this figure allowed us to find the high and low crime areas with the following results (shown in Table 3):High crime counties (crime rate of 13.46 and above): Lee, Pike, King, Cook, York, Clay, Kern, Knox, Cass, Kent and Lane. Low crime counties (crime rate below 13.46): Nye, Bell, Ida, Kane, Jay, Bay, Ray, Webb and Lake.
Conclusion
The specific metric used in this analysis took into consideration the total number of crime for each county as well as the population density. The crime rates were calculated based on all relevant crime data provided. (Table1). Mathematically, this methodology shows an accurate amount of crime occurring by persons in relation to the magnitude of their living area. This method takes out the inaccurate assumption that higher populated counties would have more crime rates than the lower populated counties.
Appendix
Table1.
State of Texkansahomatucky Crime Data: 2012
Table2.
State of Texkansahomatucky 2012 Crime Rates: County
County Crime Rate Percentage of Total Crime Rate
Nye County 7.54 2.80%
Bell County 8.32 3.09%
Ida County 8.61 3.20%
Kane County 8.79 3.27%
Jay County 9.12 3.39%
Bay County 9.26 3.44%
Ray County 10.33 3.84%
Webb County 10.36 3.85%
Lake County 11.96 LOW CRIME RATE 4.44%
Lee County 13.69 HIGH CRIME RATE 5.09%
Pike County 14.21 5.28%
King County 14.56 5.41%
Cook County 14.93 5.55%
York County 15.98 5.94%
Clay County 16.69 6.20%
Kern County 17.22 6.40%
Knox County 17.98 6.68%
Cass County 19.00 7.06%
Kent County 20.17 7.49%
Lane County 20.46 7.60%
Total Crime Rate 269.18 Median Crime Rate = 13.46
Low Crime is equivalent to a crime rate below the median crime rate
High Crime is equivalent to a crime rate above the median crime rate
