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  • 1.  Racial disparities in police stops in US cities

    Posted 08-03-2020 14:28
    Our article "Racial disparities in police stops in US cities" was published in Significance 17 (4)

    The theme is a hot topic so instructors may want to discuss the article with their students. The article includes a link to the R code used for the analysis. To encourage student discussion it is best (if possible) to apply the analysis to regional data. Alternatively, consider using data sets from "Principles of Managerial Statistics and Data Science", a book that applies data science and concepts in statistics on over 100 open data sets throughout the world. Interesting applications include:

    • Assessing racial profiling during police traffic stops in San Diego (based on over 100,000 police stops),
    • Modeling taxi fares in Chicago based on 133 million taxi rides,
    • Creating an animated visualization of Baltimore housing data,
    • Analyzing Canada tourism employment,
    • Studying harassment of members of the LGBT community in the EU, and
    • Estimating the Puerto Rican death toll due to the Hurricane Maria emergency, are just a small fraction of examples.
    For many case studies and examples, R code is made available so that instructors or students can either reproduce the results or use the code as a starting point for a different analysis. You can find codes (and data sets) in the companion website.


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    Roberto Rivera
    Professor
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  • 2.  RE: Racial disparities in police stops in US cities

    Posted 08-04-2020 10:08
    Thank you for your message. Would it be possible to make your examples and data sets available without adopting the book?

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    Leszek Gawarecki
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  • 3.  RE: Racial disparities in police stops in US cities

    Posted 08-04-2020 10:40
    Of course! R codes and presentation slides in the companion website should help put into context many of the examples and case studies. Some additional ideas can also be found here

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    Roberto Rivera
    Professor
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  • 4.  RE: Racial disparities in police stops in US cities

    Posted 08-05-2020 10:59
    Thank you Dr. Rivera. These are fantastic datasets and materials.

    If you (or anyone) has similar projects suitable for biostatistics PhD students, I would appreciate hearing about them.

    Thank you.
    Loki

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    Loki Natarajan
    Professor
    UCSD
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  • 5.  RE: Racial disparities in police stops in US cities

    Posted 08-05-2020 17:03
    Hi Loki,


    The number of people who have died from Covid 19 has become a political issue. Also, it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint someone's cause of death. An alternative is to use death certificate data to perform an excess all-cause death analysis. Moreover, one can perform an excess pneumonia death analysis; pneumonia is a common comorbidity of covid-19. A colleague and I performed such an analysis, the preprint is on medrxiv. The data is available in CDC's website. Excess deaths analysis are useful during emergencies in general, not just pandemics. Principles of Managerial Statistics and Data Science shows some (simple) applications to estimate the excess deaths that occurred in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The technical aspects of two methods - which made adjustments for large population displacement - are available in this article and the code is in GitHub.

    Kind regards,
    Rob

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    Roberto Rivera
    Professor
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  • 6.  RE: Racial disparities in police stops in US cities

    Posted 08-09-2020 16:01
      |   view attached
    The importance of proper death certificate data is discussed in a short note: "The Importance of Proper Death Certification During the COVID-19 Pandemic" by Gill and DeJoseph, JAMA, June 10, 2020, hopefully attached.

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    David Bristol
    Statistical Consulting Services, Inc.
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  • 7.  RE: Racial disparities in police stops in US cities

    Posted 08-09-2020 21:53
    Edited by Roberto Rivera 08-09-2020 21:53
    Thank you David. The point the paper makes is a valid one; properly completed death certificate are needed. Another important aspect is timeliness of death certificate data. The lags in death certificate data vary substantially by jurisdiction.  For example, in June Connecticut only had a few weeks of 2020 death certificate data while other jurisdictions had reliable death certificate data until May. For jurisdictions with a smaller lag in reporting death certificate data, our preprint shows that all-cause death certificates can be very useful in determining changes in overall mortality.

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    Roberto Rivera
    Professor
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  • 8.  RE: Racial disparities in police stops in US cities

    Posted 08-06-2020 11:53
    Edited by Roberto Rivera 08-06-2020 11:54
    I recently found out that access to the data sets through the Instructors companion website is now password protected.
    The data sets come from open data portals around the world. For the book I shared the data sets and not just the open portal links to ensure consistency in results (and problem solutions - since some data sets are actively updated) and because sometimes data sets are removed from the portals.
    All data sets can be accessed without a password through the student companion website. Keep in mind that the data file titles are not always descriptive so knowing which data set suits best your needs should be done using the book as a reference - where the data sets are given context. Additionally, the `opendatasets' file gives a description and sample uses of some data sets.


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    Roberto Rivera
    Professor
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