Project Overview: St. Louis, somewhat uniquely, is a city of neighborhoods.
Each neighborhood in St. Louis has
distinct characteristics.
This was the spark for our group project. We decided that we wanted to try and characterize
some of the characteristics of St. Louis neighborhoods. We looked at
population,
education,
businesses,
crime, and
income.
Complications:
- The data we found was categorized in different ways -
neighborhoods,
census tracts, and zip codes.
So, we had to explore how all these ways of parsing the land of St. Louis city were related.
- We focused on counts, although you will find some relative crime illustrations.
- Lurking Variables:
There are so many other variables that could be considered for the items we are looking at.
For example, for our school data we did not consider private schools or the area that the students
of each school lived, only the location of the school. For the crime data, there could be many
lurking variables. Population size should be considered (we look at crime relative to population).
Locations of large events such as concerts, fairs, and sporting events should also be considered.
If there are more people coming to an area you expect there to be more crime just because there are
more people. These are just a couple of examples of why our exploration is just the beginning and
much more would need to be done to make any truly meaningful observation.
Check out the links for more information on our project.
