My friend Danny Fisher’s website Wish I Didn’t Know has picked up a story about a proposed smart-phone app that will warn users about high-crime districts, presumably so that safety-conscious travelers can avoid blundering into them.
The app has apparently irked various interest groups, who I suppose think that gathering crime-rate statistics and making them available them to the public gives high-crime areas a bad name, or something.
In the article, we read:
Sarah E. Chinn, author of ”˜Technology and the Logic of American Racism,’ told AOL the app is ”˜pretty appalling.’
”˜Of course, an application like this defines crime pretty narrowly, since all crimes happen in all kinds of neighborhoods.’
”˜I can’t imagine that there aren’t perpetrators of domestic violence, petty and insignificant drug possession, fraud, theft, and rape in every area.’
That’s just fantastic, and highly original, too. Just to be clear, because this is such a piercing insight that you might not get it right away: if you were to imagine that a neighborhood with, say, fifty street assaults a week is somehow a more dangerous place for a stroll than a neighborhood with five such crimes per decade, you’re thinking too narrowly. Instead, the right way to understand crime rates, in light of Ms. Chinn’s intellectual breakthrough, is to assign them only two possible values: 0 or 1. And since “all crimes happen in all kinds of neighborhoods” *, we can narrow the range even further: everyplace just gets a 1! Done.
(Somebody should tell Microsoft this, by the way — because as a professional software engineer, I can tell you it will make coding this app one hell of a lot easier. Fewer bugs, too, I’ll wager.)
So there you have it — a breathtaking unification, a Great Leap Forward in what was until now a dauntingly complex field of study: all crime happens equally, everywhere. Move over, James Clerk Maxwell!
Read the rest here.
* I’ll confess that I’m having trouble remembering the last time there was, for example, a gang-related drive-by shooting in Wellfleet, MA (pop. 2750), but just to be sociable I’ll defer to Ms. Chinn as to whether “all crimes happen in all kinds of neighborhoods”. She is, after all, a published author.
16 Comments
I wonder (if the app was released as originally intended) how Conway, Arkansas would’ve rated.
Recall that “Loki” post?
Or Beebe?
I think the app is great and the criticism of it totally misses the mark. However, there is a criticism that could be made. If the app is intended to help travelers avoid dangerous neighborhoods then just giving crime stats would not be as helpful as it could be.
Lets imagine a neighborhood that is riddled by a breakdown in social institutions and family dynamics. The area would have a large amount of crime and the app would show the area as a place to avoid. However, much of that crime could be residents against residents (spousal abuse, domestic crime, etc.). As a traveler visting a place what I really want to know is how much crime there is in an area that is committed between people that don’t know each other. Overall crime rates will be a decent predictor of such types of crime but not perfect.
That’s not a criticism, it’s a feature request! Filter by crime type. Great idea.
Possible options: Gang rape, domestic violence, public nudity, excess carbon emissions, jury tampering, securities fraud, etc.
Duly noted. I’ll pass it along to the dev team.
I want a pony. Could we have a pony?
Liberals are truly beyond parody, and their mathematical sense does not extend beyond the none-one-many of the Piraha tribe in Amazon.
That “filter by crime” feature really would be excellent, letting people choose for themselves which crimes they fear. When I linked to the news about that app, I proposed that the predictions of this app could be made even more accurate by including the percentage of the Democrat vote in that neighbourhood.
Ha! Excellent optimization.
An even funnier article complains that this app doesn’t warn people about subprime mortgage scams. You just couldn’t make this stuff up. The article also concludes that these high-risk neighbourhoods are more dangerous to their denizens than to people driving through them, illustrating how liberals have trouble understanding even the basic concepts of probability. (Compare: BASE jumping kills fewer people each year than cars, and therefore it is wrong to warn people about the risks of BASE jumping.)
Subprime areas actually is a a pretty nifty thing I’d like… still – I’d like more to know where some hoaxer might call me up where I’m renting a motel room, asking me to “help with the sprinklers” by holding a flame under a sprinkler head then begin flinging the extinguishers to break out all the motel’s windows.
Yes of course I know it was 64° in Arkansas today (but that might’ve been a hoax too since this date 2011 it was 22° – hate to find myself leaving the house in a T and suddenly finding myself going nine days without electrical power due to a repeat of 2009’s ice storm).
I definitely don’t want my glasses broken during an optometrist’s strike should the farmers go wild and red-wing blackbirds begin falling outta the sky.
Screw Ms. Chinn [anybody but me anyway – TheBigHenry?] that app’s code must be released.
Malcolm, Programmer ol’ buddy – do something!
I don’t know why you would want me to screw her. Sarah E. Chinn is an associate professor of English at Hunter College, and the executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. (I wonder if there are any linguists at CUNY?)
Anyway, she probably doesn’t screw men. Dollars to donuts she’s a flaming liberal. I’ll just stick needles in my eyes …
Heck TheBigHenry, when I typed that “somewhat” facetiously – I hadn’t bothered with (except for noting she’d published) any of her qualifications.
Now that I’m aware my suggestion piqued your “Googlin’ fingers” (a’course you’d need be aware of David Duff’s DuffandNonsense tit’ling) ‘pears to me you very well, could be the US of A’s version of the UK’s “Lesbian Straightener.”
(Wouldn’t want a wmv mind – maybe whatever in 25 words or less ‘ould set my mind at ease Western Civilization could possibly be saved.)
TheBigHenry – set yore ass to really Googlin’ – there is an example after all of Conservatives doing their best, mind…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073302/Alabama-politician-Bill-Johnson-sperm-donation-scandal-New-Zealand.html
Mind TheBigHenry – should the Missus ask – it wasn’t just JK’s suggesting, rather you realized it was TheBigHenry’s Patriotic Duty. Should she question “So Honest and Forthright” JK’s veracity pull up that interview Newt gave on CBN.
TheBigHenry?
http://duffandnonsense.typepad.com/duff_nonsense/2011/09/the-lesbian-straightener-caught-between-two-ladies.html
JK,
Having deciphered your Arkansasian message to the extent that I kinda sorta catch your drift, my patriotic duty persuades me to choose an alternative course of action: I will sit in traffic, naked, eating glass.
I must have this app. I propose we find Ms. Chinn (interesting surname in light of TheBigHenry’s revelation regarding her particular tastes…oops….did it again didn’t I? – I digress). We find her and take her to some place like, say downtown St. Louis, MO, or Memphis, TN, around 1 or 2 am. A few up close and personal interviews with out and about said cities’ inhabitants might serve to change her perspective. The next night we can drop her off same time in cozy Edina, MN, or Rienzi, MS, and see if cold hard data shakes her out of her liberal stupor. Lord forbid we “profile” communities out of that archaic notion called “self preservation”.
Personally I wouldn’t choose to hang out in either place, or many others at that time of night out of good old common sense – I don’t need the app to tell me this. However, let’s say as a single mom of four kiddos I am driving home from a family vacation and it happens to be this late. I have a flat tire. This app would come in handy – at least I’d have a good idea whether to keep the doors locked and pray while I’m calling 911 to get a police escort outta’ there. Might also use this app to help plan said vacations. Damn right I’m a racist profiler in those kinds of situations (against whatever race happens to be in those areas committing enough crime to cause the statistics to be noted by said app).
JK, just find yourself a motel that doesn’t mind you temporarily barricading the windows and setting up a perimeter defense…with your background that shouldn’t be too much trouble, correct?
LH
Depends. CCTV is usually acceptable – claymores less so. Beanbags and tasers acceptable but range is less than optimal.
Too often, the walls are only reinforced with sheetrock – I can piss through gypboard – don’t wanna possibly harm innocent adjoining tenants.