Updated December 29, 2011
Note: You are being evaluated on both your substance and the presentation. Make the effort to have your graphs and charts look professional and consistent (size, colors, etc).

Section 1
The data for part A can be found in the excel file “empiricalDATA_CITY” file on BB.

Please use the “City assignment table” on BB in the Part A helper files to find out what cities you have been assigned for questions 1 through 7. My Assigned cities are Syracuse and Philadelphia

Question 1
Over the 24 year period, 1985-2009, which of the two cities had the greatest amount of increase in public safety? Explain your argument and support it by calculating the appropriate descriptive statistics- put the statistics in a properly labeled table.

Question 2
Calculate the change in motor vehicle theft  rates for each year starting with 1985 and ending in 2009 and put the statistics in a properly labeled table.

Question 3
Use your answer from Q2 to calculate the mean average of the percentage change for the motor vehicle theft -rates for both cities.

Question 4
Use your answers from Q2 to create a properly labeled graph illustrating the Pct change in motor vehicle theft  rates in both cities over the same data range.

Question 5
Describe in COMPLETE SENTENCES (using the graphing terms in your class notes) the trends/patterns that are in your graph. There are three different aspects to this:
a) Describe the city 1 trend/pattern
b) Describe the city 2 trend/pattern
c) Analyze the relationship between the trend/pattern between both cities

Question 6
Please provide the descriptive statistics for the motor vehicle theft data for both of the cities you have been assigned

Question 7
In Ammons (chp3) he discusses the value of using moving averages as a way of ‘smoothing’ out data for outliers. Use this method to compare and provide analysis of the motor vehicle thefts in the two assigned cities. You have to decide which specific variable you are going to take the moving average of (reported numbers… rates… or percentage change). Then you have to decide how to present your analysis and write a brief analytical statement. THEN write a brief statement where you explain why you chose which variable you chose to assess and why you presented your findings in the way you did- there is more than one way to present this- you can do it graphically or create a table of some kind or some combination.
Section 2

For this section you will use data from the great state of Ohio and the national data from the US.  Use data downloaded from the BJS “Crime Trends” database at:

http://www.ucrdatatool.gov

Click on “Go to the table-building tool” and then you will get the screen with different choices- for now you need the top one in the left column “All state and US total”

Then you will come to a screen with three sets of choices- different methods of searching- choose the first one: State by State and national trends

Download Ohio AND the national violent and property crime numbers (actual reported events) and rate data for the years 1960 to the most recent available.

Click “get table” and then you will see a link toward the top that says “Spreadsheet of this table (.csv file)”. This will allow you to download your table to your computer/disc. Open it up and save it under a new name (every file that is downloaded is given the same generic name). When you do this you should change the file format from CSV to Excel spreadsheet. Do not simply “open” the file as this will cause you problems later, seriously. Follow directions, doing so will help you!

Question 1: Graph the percentage change for the property crime rate for Ohio and the United States. Assess and analyze the graph.

Question 2 Create and properly label a histogram with the reported numbers of violent crimes (totals, not rates) from your state.

Question 3
From the Ohio data…. 4 pie charts for the year 1975
1)    violent and property crime (totals)
2)    Violent crime categories (totals)
3)    Property crime categories (totals)
4)    All categories (totals)

Suppose you were given only these pie 4 charts by a colleague and had no other data about that year. What conclusions, if any, do these permit you to draw?

Question 4
Re-do question 3 but use the rate (not totals) data.
Suppose you were given only these pie 4 charts by a colleague and had no other data about that year. What conclusions, if any, do these permit you to draw?

Question 5
Lastly, look at all 8 pie charts. Are the two sets similar or dramatically different. Either way, why do you think those differences or similarities exist?