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> identify high-crime areas that to target for patrolling, which doesn't seem like a huge problem to me The wonderful Weapons of Math Destruction has a chapter
by Swizec 3y ago
> identify high-crime areas that to target for patrolling, which doesn't seem like a huge problem to me
The wonderful Weapons of Math Destruction has a chapter on how this leads to a self reinforcing loop.
More crimes means more police presence. More police presence means more recorded crimes. More crime data means more police …
- PhilipRoman 3y agoIf only we had statistical tools to compensate for this...
- llbeansandrice 3y agoWhat statistical tools compensate for the generally racist and shitty nature of US police officers?
- pxmpxm 3y agoI don't expect to read this level of asinine on HN.
- KingMob 3y agoThere are limits to how far stats can compensate for missing data, especially non-random missing data.
- User23 3y agoI hate how wet streets cause rain.
- justrealist 3y agoYes if you choose to use your data like an idiot then you will generate idiotic conclusions. This does nothing to negate the value of data used intelligently.
- Swizec 3y agoThis is a description of how it is currently being used in practice. Yes you can use data well. It is unfortunately not being used well.
- pxmpxm 3y ago> More police presence means more recorded crimes. The article in the headline implies the opposite: statistical inference of future crime location -> more cops in said location -> no crime in said location. It should be fairly easy to back out an out of sample data set for this - ie predicted crime location where the extra cops didn't get deployed and see if that lines up with empirical observations.