Finding Clusters of Crime in Philadelphia
“Violent crime fell 3 percent in Philadelphia in 2010” – this title from the Philadelphia Inquirer depicts Philadelphia’s reported decline in crime in the late 2000s and 2010s. However, is this claim exactly what it appears to be? In their paper, “Crime in Philadelphia: Bayesian Clustering and Particle Optimization,” Balocchi, Deshpande, George, and Jensen use Bayesian hierarchical modeling and clustering to identify more nuanced patterns in temporal trends and baseline levels of crime in Philadelphia.