Crime Statistics | Stats + Stories Episode 158

If you’ve been following the news much then you may have noticed reporters beginning to explore how COVID is impacting crime rates around the country. Police commissioners are even appearing on newscasts trying to explain how various COVID measures may have changed the kinds of crimes they’re seeing in their cities. One of the problems becomes tying those changes directly to COVID and of course, a long-standing issue when it comes to crime rates is understanding how we measure crime in the first place. Measuring crime is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Sharon Lohr. Lohr researches and writes about statistics: where they come from, how to interpret them, and how to tell the good statistics from the bad. After receiving her Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sharon taught for 25 years at the University of Minnesota and Arizona State University, where she was Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Statistics. As a Vice President at Westat, she developed survey designs and statistical analysis methods for use in transportation, public health, crime measurement, and education. She now does freelance statistical consulting and writing. See the feature article about Sharon in the September 2018 issue of Amstat News.