MTH231: WaPo Fatal Police Shooting Data

After class on Wednesday, I started narrowing down my research question. I am still in the process of doing so, but I know that I want my question to pertain to the racial disparity shown by the data. My goal is to have the exact research question by this weekend and then do an in-depth analysis of the CSV file for the research question using Python, R, or any other tools that are necessary.

I have been using Jupyter Notebook to work with the data in Python so far. It has been useful, and it will be even more useful when I figure out my exact question. I have also been getting better at using the Pandas library in Python, and many of its functions will help me further my analysis. Overall, I expect to start making major progress over the course of this next week.

I am still curious about the same questions such as the disproportionate rates that Black Americans are killed at and whether there are more police shootings in poverty-stricken areas. I also found the heat map that Nicole made to be intriguing.

I have been trying to get acclimated with Python. I am learning how to use Python and its various libraries. Specifically, I have been testing out all of the different functions in Pandas to see if it will help me find interesting trends in the data.

I also plan on using R and RStudio for certain tasks, especially if it’s better than Python in certain areas. I hope to find more interesting insights leveraging these tools.

This week, the data has raised more questions. I wonder if there is any significant disparity in race regarding the shootings. In last week’s analysis, I noticed that Black people were killed at disproportionate rates compared to their share of the U.S. population, which was nearly a 200% increase over what would be expected. This makes me curious if there are other significant trends in the data.

I also wonder if the data shows more shootings in certain areas, particularly those with higher poverty rates. I plan to use Mathematica and Python to explore the data in the coming weeks, and maybe new questions will arise.

The data from the Washington Post on fatal police shootings brings up some interesting patterns that I noticed.

As some others have already mentioned, I’ve noticed the data shows that approximately 82.8% of the fatal police shootings had body cameras off.  This does raise the question of whether body cameras being off was more likely to occur depending on race or threat type.

I also find it interesting that Black Americans only make up approximately 12.63% of the total U.S. population, yet it shows they make up approximately 23.8% of the total fatalities in the data. 

Additionally, as we have already covered in class, I am curious to see if the poverty rates and locations of the shootings show any kind of trend. I hope to find some answers in the coming weeks.

 

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