Over the past week I grouped my data by state and year to start exploring overall trends. I made a rough chart showing total shootings by year and started looking into population data so I can calculate per capita rates next. My goal for this upcoming week is to finish cleaning the data, finalize the visualizations, and start writing up what the patterns might mean.
Week 3
For my midterm project, I’m planning to focus on police shootings data by looking at (1) which states have the highest vs. lowest numbers of cases and (2) how the totals have changed year by year to identify when the biggest jumps occurred. To go beyond just raw totals, I plan to calculate per capita rates so I can compare shootings relative to population size. Originally, I was going to use PSPP, but I decided to switch to R/Python since they’re more mainstream for data analysis and will give me more flexibility with visualization. So far, I’ve been cleaning the dataset and grouping the data by state and year. Next week I plan to generate summary statistics and create visualizations like bar plots, line graphs before moving into deeper analysis.
Week 2
This week, I started thinking more seriously about which program I want to use. The main options are R, Python, Mathematica, and PSPP, so I’ve been considering the pros and cons of each and which one I’d feel most comfortable learning. I don’t have a final decision yet, but it helped to start comparing them. I wasn’t in class on Friday, so I missed the discussion on one of the questions a classmate brought up. I did look over the slides, though, and it was interesting to see how the data could be cleaned and analyzed to answer questions about different patterns. Even though I couldn’t be there in person, I was able to get a sense of how we’ll be approaching our own projects later on. Overall, this week was more about planning and deciding which program I’ll be using moving forward.
Week 1
This week, I focused on looking through the police shootings dataset and coming up with questions based on what I noticed. As I went through the data, I paid attention to patterns like which races showed up most often, how often body cameras were used, whether victims were armed or unarmed, and how many cases were related to mental illness. I also thought about location and time trends, such as which states had the most shootings and whether the numbers have changed over the years. From these observations, I created questions like whether body cameras make a difference, if weapon types vary by state, or which year had the biggest increase in cases. Basically, I was able to turn what I noticed into questions that could be explored later.