Troy Shaffer
Dr. Smith
CODES123
1 May 2024
After looking at many data sets, I decided to do a data analysis of crime data in St. Louis. This interested me because my mom would always hate it when I would go into St. Louis for any reason and she would always say it’s dangerous, and I didn’t really believe her. I am specifically looking at all crimes throughout all of St. Louis in December of 2020. The St. Louis metropolitan police department publishes these data sets. These are used so that everyone in the St. Louis area can be aware of the crimes in the area. These data sets can also be used to compare crime rates with different months or years. I cannot find exactly how they source their data, but I can assume that since it is the St. Louis Police Department, that they source their data pretty easily considering it is a government related department.
The data itself is structured pretty clearly. They list the type of crime, being homicide, robbery, arson, et cetera. They then list the amount of each specific crime next to it. The largest number of crimes being larceny at 1037 cases in just December of 2020. You also have to take the unfounded into account, which is next to the amount. Unfounded crimes are crimes that have been found to baseless or just falsely reported. Finally there is just other adjustments, which there is only two total out of all of the crimes.
There is not much mention of any data cleaning on the website, but I am thinking that the two random adjustments would be a form of it. I don’t think data cleaning is really relevant for this type of data set because it the crime happened, or it didn’t. Considering that the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department made these data sets, I think that their goal was just providing the data to the people. I think with that goal in mind that there wouldn’t be much data changing.
Personally, I don’t see myself using this data that much. But if I were to use it, I would probably just look at crime rates in a specific area I might be visiting.
This data can be helpful to understand several dynamics of Missouri Botanical Gardens. By analyzing the crime data, we can look at the safety of neighborhoods surrounding the garden. This can also be helpful for the gardens to create a safer visitor experience with specific safety measures. The gardens can also look at the crime data to create collaborative partnerships with different organizations with the goal of creating a safer environment around the gardens.