Special note to our readers - bear with us in this post. We know crunching numbers is boring, but we're really wondering about this stuff.
More crime reduction?
More crime reduction?
- Overall crime was down for the 29th consecutive month in Chicago, according to preliminary monthly crime statistics for the month of May released by police Sunday.
Total crime in the city fell 5.9 percent compared to crime numbers through May 2010, police said in a press release.
One of the more prevalent drops in May is that of homicide, down 16.3 percent. Through the end of May, there were 27 fewer homicides this year than the same timeframe in 2010, police said. More than half of the 25 police districts citywide reported decreases in their homicide numbers.
Twenty-nine consecutive months of falling crime. Twenty-nine. Almost two-and-a-half years. We've joked here a few times about how "if crime keeps falling, we're going to owe a bunch to the future." Now we're starting to wonder.
As you see from the quoted article, the Department says crime fell "5.9 percent compared to crime numbers through May 2010." No note if that's year-to-date or what, but it makes us wonder. Every number we can recall over the past two years has been in that area, give or take a bit. So let's try a little experiment.
Let's say that twenty-nine months ago, there were 100 crimes in Chicago. Now let's say, for the sake of making things simple, that every month there was a 3% drop in crime. We're attempting to err on the low side because we really don't recall any drops of under 4% (we might be completely off base). And to be statistically honest, we'll apply that 3% to each month's new number of crimes (there are ways to manipulate statistics, but we'll avoid that.) We'll round the numbers in accordance with accepted mathematical processes:
As you see from the quoted article, the Department says crime fell "5.9 percent compared to crime numbers through May 2010." No note if that's year-to-date or what, but it makes us wonder. Every number we can recall over the past two years has been in that area, give or take a bit. So let's try a little experiment.
Let's say that twenty-nine months ago, there were 100 crimes in Chicago. Now let's say, for the sake of making things simple, that every month there was a 3% drop in crime. We're attempting to err on the low side because we really don't recall any drops of under 4% (we might be completely off base). And to be statistically honest, we'll apply that 3% to each month's new number of crimes (there are ways to manipulate statistics, but we'll avoid that.) We'll round the numbers in accordance with accepted mathematical processes:
- Month #1 - 100 crimes;
- Month #2 - 100 crimes x .03 = 3......97 crimes occurred;
- Month #3 - 97 crimes x .03 = 2.91......94 crimes occurred;
- Month #4 - 94 crimes x .03 = 2.8......91 crimes occurred;
Now carry that out twenty-nine times. Make a spreadsheet. Use paper, pencil and a calculator. What you get is by Month #29, forty-one crimes have occurred. From one hundred all the way down to forty-one. That's a 59% drop in crime in just under two-and-a-half years.
Does that even seem possible? It doesn't feel possible, but our perceptions, like everyone else's, are colored by media coverage and first-hand viewing of conditions on the ground. We've got way more than 2.5 years on the job and we just don't see it being 59% safer than it was in 2009. We'll admit that we don't have the exact percentages the Department is using to come up with these numbers, but we also don't think we're very far off.
Any geniuses out there?
Does that even seem possible? It doesn't feel possible, but our perceptions, like everyone else's, are colored by media coverage and first-hand viewing of conditions on the ground. We've got way more than 2.5 years on the job and we just don't see it being 59% safer than it was in 2009. We'll admit that we don't have the exact percentages the Department is using to come up with these numbers, but we also don't think we're very far off.
Any geniuses out there?