wonder what is is about WI members who insist on spinning stats in their positive way, all the while misleading the remainder of the august members of this forum.
garbage in, garbage out of the numbers game... hummm, interestingly, quote:
... the 2016 Crime in the United States report — the first released under President Trump’s administration — contains close to 70 percent fewer data table than the 2015 version did.... The data missing from the report is mostly about arrests and homicides. There were 51 tables of arrest data in the 2015 report, and there are only seven in the 2016 report. Data about clearance rates — essentially the percentage of crimes solved — was covered in four tables in 2015 but just one in 2016.
The data missing from the report is mostly about arrests and homicides. There were 51 tables of arrest data in the 2015 report, and there are only seven2 in the 2016 report. Data about clearance rates — essentially the percentage of crimes solved — was covered in four tables in 2015 but just one in 2016.
Changes to the UCR’s (added by solus for clarity ~ Uniform Crime Report) yearly report are not unheard of, and the press release that accompanies the 2016 report, which was published in late September, acknowledges the removal of some tables, saying that the UCR program had “streamlined the 2016 edition.” But changes to the report typically go through a body called the Advisory Policy Board (APB), which is responsible for managing and reviewing operational issues for a number of FBI programs. This time they did not.
...queries... about whether the changes to the 2016 report had been made in consultation with the Advisory Policy Board, a spokesman for the UCR responded that the program had “worked with staff from the Office of Public Affairs to review the number of times a user actually viewed the tables on the internet.”
...“To me it’s shocking that they made these decisions to publish that many fewer tables and they didn’t make the decision with the APB,” James Nolan, who worked at the UCR for five years and now teaches at West Virginia University.... Nolan called the FBI’s removal of the tables for lack of web traffic, “somewhat illogical.”
Although the removal of the tables makes it more difficult to get information on one of the White House’s most prominent causes, it also seems like part of a trend in the Trump administration: the suppression of government data and an unwillingness to share information with the press and public. About two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the FEMA website stopped displaying key metrics relating to island residents’ access to drinkable water and electricity.
Richard Rosenfeld, former president of the American Society of Criminology and a professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, noticed that the 2016 report no longer had data for a trend area that he tracks — homicides related to the narcotic drug trade. “One could argue the Trump administration is interested in the opioid epidemic and might be interested in its criminal justice consequences,” he said.
“I simply don’t understand why they would omit any of the tables that they have included from years past.”
lies, damn lies, and stats...