Virtual Identity Dialogue

My friend Jon Udell is diligently trying to figure out whether there is an increased amount of crime in his little town in New Hampshire.

Another twist to this is the ranking of cities with crimes. Dallas, unfortunately has had the distinction of being #1 on that list by the FBI for the past few years (almost a decade). Which has caused lots of turmoil (including I believe at least one firing of a police chief).

I've always felt that this wasn't a correct assessment - in particular since what the stats seemed to show was Dallas had a much larger number of property crime in comparison to other large cities like LA. And that it was much lower than those cities in violent crime.

In today's Dallas Morning News (may require registration) they are running an article discussing how after a review of the data being sent to the FBI for compilation of the list - they realized they had not taken advantage of all of the rules - meaning that Dallas in effect was over-reporting.

Which just goes to show you - in so many situations - everything seems to come down to Garbage In/Garbage Out.