These days, if you listen to presidential candidates of various hand-sizes or watch a lot of news, you probably think that a crime wave is overtaking the United States. However, if you happen to be a data science student who’s looking at crime data and working on homework assignments like these, you probably know better.
Here’s some recent data about crime in Chicago…
Pretty much every type of crime is dropping year after year and it’s been happening for quite awhile. If you insist on worrying about stuff, you should know that theft, battery, and criminal damage are the most common types of crime and make up about half of all arrests. Also, in case you’re curious, those cycles in the figure above are due to the fact that more crime occurs when it’s hot.
It’s incredibly consistent: as the temperature goes up, so does the crime rate. So, if you’re really worried about crime, stay in your safe room during hot days. Actually, it turns out that safe rooms aren’t that necessary either. Home invasions, while they make good news stories, actually made up 0.085% of all crime in Chicago. That’s not 8.5%, that’s 8.5 one hundredths of a percent. Similarly, homicide, while making up about a quarter of the crime stories on the news actually represent less than 0.2% of all crime. There should probably be some kind of a warning label on newscasts: “We’ve chosen to show you tons of murders only because it’s exciting and brings in viewers. We are in no way implying that the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us.”
So, rest easy kids! Put down the guns, because you’ll probably just hurt yourselves. And whatever you do, don’t travel into the past, because that’s where the real danger lies.
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