"It is good to have the statistics, no matter how bad, it is better to know than to be in fearful ignorance. "
I agree 100%. It's in our nature to magnify the dangers if we don't have hard figures (and lots of people will sadly continue to prefer their paranoia over the figures). It would be nice to hear from someone who knows how to interpret these figures. It seems pretty obvious that most crime is down in Woodstock except for those where more effective policing will mean bigger numbers - no downside there. So congrats to our cops. But many of these figures are hard for us to interpret since the figures may change because the number of crimes have changed, but they might just as likely have changed because of more or less reporting. The murder figures, I've heard, tend to be very accurate because people report almost 100% of murders. In Woodstock we see low numbers (not low enough, of course) but also random fluctuations over the years - no trend. Nationally murders are down only a little. Encouraging, but not overwhelming. Also, once the data are put together at the national level, all the small errors will have been magnified. I know from my own field (health) that many (but not all) of these national statistics are almost meaningless. If anybody knows anyone with experience interpreting crime figures, it'd be great to hear their take on it - especially since the papers, when they report these things, make no attempt to get expert interpretation and usually just regurgitate the figures. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Observatory Neighbourhood watch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/obsnw?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
