Executive Summary
Background:
We are presented with statistics of Seattle's crime information. One dataset provided is the crime rate for 1996 to 2007, and the other is from 2008 to 2014
What we hope to find:
- Overall crime rate difference between 1996-2007 and 2008-2014
- Rate of overall crime increase from 1996 to the present
- Rate of crime increase for each individual crime from 1996 to 2014
- Seasonal trends in crime for 2008 to 2014
What we found:
- There wasn't a major year-by-year trend
- For both violent and theft-related crimes, there was a major drop in number of crimes (37% and 46% respectively) between 2005 and 2006
- Crime was significantly higher in 1996 to 2005, then suddenly dropped in 2006 and stayed low ever since.
- There was approximately fifteen times more theft related crimes to violent crimes each given year
- 14.8x more theft crimes than violent crimes (Median)
- 15.0x more theft crimes than violent crimes (average)
- Between 1996 and 2005 (inclusive), the average number of crimes was ~99,106 crimes
- Between 1996 and 2005 (inclusive), the average number of theft-related crimes was ~92,375 crimes
- Between 1996 and 2005 (inclusive), the average number of violent crimes was ~6,731 crimes
- Between 2006 and 2014 (inclusive), the average of number crimes was ~34,357 crimes
- Between 2006 and 2014 (inclusive), the average number of theft-related crimes was ~32,384 crimes
- Between 2006 and 2014 (inclusive), the average number of violent crimes was ~1,972 crimes
- For 2008 to 2014, there was a slight increase in crime during the middle of each year (i.e. summer time)
Sociological Hypothesis:
My major conclusion after viewing this dataset is that, assuming no data was lost after 2005, a major law(s) was implemented that impacted crime rates (either directly or indirectly) in between 2005 and 2006. Either a law that deterred criminals or helped the poor and mentally-unstable.
Author: Shane Austrie (LinkedIn) (Personal Site)