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New Crime-Predicting Algorithm Borrows From Apollo Space Mission Tech (digitaltrends.com)
Researchers from Georgia Tech and the UK's University of Surrey have developed a new predictive policing algorithm that aims to better manage police resources and gain an upper hand in the war on crime. It reportedly uses technology that's been previously used in weather forecasting and the Apollo space missions. Digital Trends reports: The new algorithm built on previous work carried out by researchers from the University of California and police forces in both the U.S. and U.K. Their 2015 research showed how a predictive policing algorithm could accurately predict between 1.4 and 2.2 times more urban crime than specialist crime analysts. By making recommendations about where to patrol, the algorithm led to a 7.4 percent reduction in crime. However, while effective, this approach has also been criticized due to concerns about possible racial profiling and the underreporting of crime. The new algorithm has so far been demonstrated on a data set of more than 1,000 violent gang crimes in Los Angeles carried out between 1999 and 2002. Early conclusions suggest that the upgraded predictive tool could prove superior for coping with the constantly fluctuating world of real-time crime prediction. The researchers published their paper in the journal Computational Statistics & Data Analysis.
This is a novel application the Kalman filter ("technology that's been previously used in weather forecasting and the Apollo space missions") which I would expect most electrical engineers to have experience with if they've ever done any sensor applications (this is the second step to processing sensor data if simple averaging doesn't work).
What TFA and, it's associated paywalled, journal article shows that regardless of what is the situation, chances are there is a mathematical approach to dealing with it. The problem is finding somebody who can look at the problem and present it in a way that different mathematical approaches can be used.
This doesn't mean that the Kalman filter is the *best* approach for this problem, just that it is a novel way of looking at the issue of predicting crime.
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> there's nothing to be done UNTIL the crime is COMMITTED.
If they could predict which block was likely to have a spike in crime 3 or 4 days in advance, that would be enough time to finish their donuts an drive a patrol car over there, potentially preventing the crime. If the presence of the patrol car didn't determine the criminal, the cops could actually catch a bad guy in the act for once, rather than taking a report the next day. I know, that's funny. They'll still just be taking reports after the fact.
Constitutional democracy
Pedantic Jerk here, but we don't live in a Constitutional democracy, we live in a Constitutional Republic. This is a common issue, I understand, but the distinction is important, even if it is ignored. See Electoral College for a prime example of the difference.
The alternative is democracy, which is the last step towards tyranny, as the majority will always vote to oppress the minority.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
there's nothing to be done UNTIL the crime is COMMITTED.
Nonsense. Law enforcement works best when it is focused on PREVENTING crimes, rather than reacting to crimes.
Using stupid phrases like "the war on crime" is not helpful. That is the exact opposite of the mentality we should have.
Historically, by far the most cost effective way to reduce crime has been to improve prenatal and early childhood nutrition and remove environmental pollutants, especially heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, and mercury. Today, black children in America have twice the average blood lead levels as white children, and prison inmates have three times the average. There is a lot more we can do at very low cost.
Look, far be it from me to step on your Pedantic Jerk routine, because I know how much it means to you, but you are wrong.
We live in a democratic republic. Some decisions are made by direct democracy and others are made via democratically-elected representatives. The modifier, "Constitutional" is really pretty meaningless in this context. It just means we have a constitution. That alone does not define or describe our actual governmental system.
Yes, it is a republic. Yes, it is democratic. Yes, you're a Pedantic Jerk, but yes, you're wrong.
This would go against the intent of the founding fathers, who believed the minority should be oppressing the majority. That's why they structured the Constitution so that it takes power out of the hands of people and puts it into the hands of wealthy elite. Unfortunately, they didn't anticipate that in 2018 the "wealthy elite" would end up being a babbling and degenerate prevaricator who hates reading and gets all his information about the world from Fox & Friends.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But what are the opportunity costs of people having to bear the burden of living under a predictive model?
If done right, there is very little negative. The cops are already driving around patrolling and if we assume that a person is less likely to commit a crime if they see a cop drive by then by telling the cops where to patrol reduces crimes, reduces arrests, and everyone benefits.
Most crimes whether it is vandalism, rape, speeding, or even theft are crimes of opportunities. You aren't going to try to steal a person's phone if that person is watching you. You aren't going to speed if you see a cop. By strategically placing cops in the most opportune locations at a given time you should be able to reduce the number of crimes committed and the number of arrests that have to be made. The same logic can be said for street lights, call boxes, etc... strategic placement of resources helps reduce crime.
How is it racial profiling? Who's putting race into the prediction models?
Even if race is not explicitly included, it is likely strongly correlated with other inputs, such as zipcodes, neighborhoods, names, prior arrest records, profile of the victim (most crime is intra-racial), etc. Since REALITY is that crime is correlated with race, any "AI" will quickly locate proxies for race in the data.
If we want to eliminate racial bias, it is not effective to modify the inputs. It is better to just modify the outputs by multiplying by a race based fudge factor to make the results politically acceptable.
Those are all good questions. But those questions are all one sided. Without asking the question of the other half of the equation, "what is the cost of crime", we're never going to fix anything correctly.
Keep in mind, the communities that most affected by crime are ALSO the communities that have the same profile as the criminals in that community. IF we are okay with subjecting them to high crime out of fear of offending people for "Racial Profiling", that is pretty damn racist IMHO. It is racism of low expectations, and racism of ignorance.
The political left is being racist when they ignore and excuse crime in certain communities, out of fear of appearing racist, because it is saying they have that as an expectation. It is a sick twisted way of appearing "not racist" while actually being the worse kind of racist.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Yeah, better to make the police less effective incase someone's feelings get hurt.
Other effective ways of reducing crime are not having the rich live next door to the poor
Not true. Mixed income neighborhoods do not have more crime. The worst crime is in areas with concentrated poverty, where the poor prey on the poor.
The alternative is democracy, which is the last step towards tyranny, as the majority will always vote to oppress the minority.
This is rubbish.There are plenty of democracies in Western Europe, and none of them are closer to tyranny than the USA.
Thanks to a voting system that allows more than two parties to flourish, voters organize in smaller blocks and it's pretty rare for one party to have a 50%+ share of the votes. This means government is done by coalitions of two or more parties. There is no single majority block any more, and any oppression of minorities becomes pretty difficult. Politicians also know that vilifying their opponents is counterproductive because one day they may have to form a coalition with the party they're vilifying now. That means party relations are a lot less toxic than in the USA, and coalition governments spend less time dismantling the work of the previous coalition than is common in the US.
Due to the two-party system in the US, it is closer to tyranny (using your definition of 'the majority oppressing the minority') than the West-European democracies.
I tried that. I bought a Somali birth certificate and everything. Less than 50 pounds sterling. It was great until I had my arm chopped off by a soldier for violating Sharia law. The effect has really hampered my playing of the middle eastern bagpipes. So much for cultural assimilation. At least the Somali shaman doctor was cheap. Stopped the stub from bleeding but I've developed green moss growing on my earlobe as a side effect. Anyway overall I give the experience four stars, would recommend.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Any first-past-the-post system like the US and UK have is likely to produce two party politics. That in turn limits the choice of president to one or two candidates backed by the two big parties. Plus, the whole thing is dominated by money, meaning politicians are effectively all corrupt.
Maybe being a politician should be like being a monk, where you have to take a vow of poverty.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Assuming that solely for the sake of argument, what guarantees do we have it will be "done right"? Will this stay the case? How do you propose to ensure and transparently show that this is indeed the case? And so on. Do tell.
This isn't predicting people, this is predicting locations. Even if it got so good that it knows there is going to be a robbery at the convenient store on 9th street at 9pm (which it can't), the cop isn't going to arrest someone until they see the crime being committed. This is similar to a tip being called in saying "I think there is going to be a gang fight at the pier at 9pm". The cop doesn't go down there and start arresting people. If there is a crowd, they might disperse the crowd and tell them to go home but they still aren't arresting people until an actual crime is committed.
I have heard people on left complain that those in certain communities are more likely to be targeted and arrested and convicted.
That is an excuse, right there. People who live in high crime areas, commit higher numbers of crimes. It is "cause and effect". How can one stop crime, if you're so fucking sensitive about the race of the perpetrators that you make excuses as to why society can't arrest the criminals because of their race, ignoring the victims are also of the same race.
The "targeted" part of your comment is racially charged, and part of exactly what I was suggesting, it is the worst form of racism, because it prevents proper policing and enables criminality in high crime areas.
cycle that takes a long time to break, and isn't easily broken.
It is easily broken, if all the NAACP, Black Lives Matters, Race Baiting leftwing pimps started to raise their expectations of their respective communities, and stopped with their inciting hatred of those trying to make their communities safer.
Look, I'm not a big fan of cops. But I am less of a fan of crime. And being Libertarian, I am not a fan of things like the "war on drugs" which is highly problematic on all sorts of levels. But at some point, we're going to have to have higher expectations before we solve the crime problem in high crime areas. Just like we should have higher expectations of police. NEITHER goal is unreasonable.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'll give you a fine example of Tyranny of the majority, in a purely democratic legal vote. Gay Marriage.
The majority, in every single vote on a statewide referendum was voted against gay marriage, or in the affirmative for marriage to be defined as a man and woman only. Even in highly red states like California. The majority in every case voted one way.
The only reason we have gay marriage now, this day, is not because of the majority vote, but rather because of a court that said it violated the Constitution of the United States. (Good, Bad, or Indifferent).
It is called Mob Rule because the mob is easily influenced, and eventually, laws are ignored and once laws are ignored for the purposes of controlling the mob, which ends in tyranny. There are some really good essays and books written from the 19th century on the topic. We have largely been isolated from tyrannical democracies because there are so few real democracies having been replaced by representative governments.
But here is a recent essay on the topic. http://www.democraticaudit.com...
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If there is a crowd, they might disperse the crowd and tell them to go home but they still aren't arresting people until an actual crime is committed.
Nonsense. Cops arrest people who haven't committed a crime all the time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"