Data Update 1
Incident-Based Crime Statistics
- Violent Crimes in Canadian Provinces
1. What dataset will you use for your final report? (describe your dataset, include a link to it and claim it at the URL above).
- The dataset I will be using for my final data deport is a crime dataset from CANSIM; Canadian Socioeconomic Database from Statistics Canada. The original dataset accounts for all incident-based crimes and it is broken down by each violation, annually. The data dates as far back as 1998 and as early as 2016. However, I will only be looking at a small section of this data over a span of 10 years to allow for a more narrow analysis.
2. Describe the dataset. What kind of data does it contain?
- The data shows two types of violations; total violations and total violent crimes violations over a 10 year period, from 2006 to 2016. At this stage, the data shows statistics for actual incidents as well as the rate per 100,000 population for each province and a total sum for all of Canada. The category, "Total violent Criminal Code violations" breaks down into 5 offenses. Homicide, murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter and infanticide.
3. Is there anything about your data that you don’t understand? (i.e. what a column heading means). How will you find this out?
- There is a column heading in my excel worksheet that says "Survey or Program Details" and another column heading that says "Uniform Crime Reporting Survey - 3302". Neither of the column headings have any information in their respective rows so I'm not too concerned or worried about it right now. Also, some of the provinces have numbers in brackets next to them and I'm not sure what that means. I plan on going back to the CANSIM website and searching through the footnotes section to see if the numbers relate to anything. As for the two column headings that I'm unclear of, I plan on going back to the original dataset to see if there is any information about them. Also, there are two tabs, related information and help where I can search for answers.
4. What are some questions you hope to answer with your data? List at least three. (you don’t need the answers at this point)
i. What province has the most total crime violations and total violent crime violations currently? Keep in mind that this dataset has not yet added statistics for 2017 so I will be using 2016 for my most recent year.
ii. Once I figure out the crime statistics from the above question, I plan on calculating the percentage increase to see the overall trend throughout the years. That will allow me to see if the province in question has had a steady rate of increase, decrease or if the rate has been steady over the last 10 years. This question will also allow me to pinpoint if there have been any specific years that the province saw significant increases or decreases in their violent crime statistics.
ii. Once I figure out the crime statistics from the above question, I plan on calculating the percentage increase to see the overall trend throughout the years. That will allow me to see if the province in question has had a steady rate of increase, decrease or if the rate has been steady over the last 10 years. This question will also allow me to pinpoint if there have been any specific years that the province saw significant increases or decreases in their violent crime statistics.
iii. Lastly, when I answer the two above questions, that should allow me to answer some important questions like, what province has proven to be the safest or most dangerous over the last ten years when it comes to violent crimes. With the understanding that not all crimes are reported, my answers will strictly be based on what I can prove i.e. what the statistics can account for. This will also allow me to see what provinces have proven to be inconsistent with their violent crime statistics. When I have the answers to these questions, It'll allow me to do a deeper analysis and pinpoint what has caused these fluctuations, has there been any crime bills passed in the last 10 years that have directly impacted these statistics?
Basic Information
It will certainly be thought provoking to learn which province is regarded as the "safest" and which is deemed the most "dangerous" according to reported crime. As you addressed in your post it is important to remember that these are only reported crimes however these statistics will still account for interesting findings.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see where crime has increased and decreased over a 10 year span. It may also be important to see the change in population over those years that way you can get a more accurate idea of which province is the safest and which is the most dangerous.
ReplyDeleteAisha: You've chosen an intense data set on a serious subject (violent crime), and you've set out to ask in-depth questions about it. That's great! I hope you can find out what the "Survey or Program Details" column and the "Uniform Crime Reporting Survey - 3302" column mean. I'm looking forward to seeing your final project.
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job of giving a detailed breakdown of the dataset you selected and what you are hoping to learn from it all. As I commented on another post, learning about crime data for our provinces/countries/neighborhoods is important for safety awareness and community improvement.
ReplyDeleteI think the data set you chose to analyze is relevant and a good category to explore. Incident based violent crimes must contain a lot of interesting data. Hopefully you can figure out what those two columns mean and if they have any significance to the data. I think this update was really detailed, but a little long and over the word limit.
ReplyDelete