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Mayor Bloombergs Comparison of the Homicide Rates in Chicago, Detroit, and New York Re-examined

No. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Topic Summary Introduction Detroit and Chicago Homicides The Big Apple and you name it! Whats wrong with the ratio y/x? The Homicides-Population Diagram for Major Cities Budgets to Fight Violent Crimes Predicting Chicagos year-end homicides for 2013 Conclusions Appendix 1: Illustrating the Idea of Work Function Appendix 2: If NYCs Boroughs Were Their Own Cities Reference list Page No. 1 2 3 6 7 12 23 27 29 31 35 38

Summary
Attention is called here, once again, to the fundamental difficulties posed by the widespread use of simple y/x ratios to make projections and comparisons, as was done recently by New York Mayor Bloomberg. In his address on Public Safety to the New York Police Department (NYPD), on April 30, 2013, Bloomberg tried to compare New York citys lowest ever homicides (419) in its entire history, with those observed in other cities and concluded with, if we had had Detroits murder rate, more than 4,500 New Yorkers would have been murdered last year instead of 419. Thats a factor of ten. What is the proper basis for comparing homicides rate in different cities? This is discussed here using x-y diagrams and calling attention to the more general law y = hx + c where x is the population and y the number of homicides. New York should be comparing itself with Austin, TX, or San Jose, CA, or San Diego, CA. But, this will never be understood if we just keep (ab)using simple y/x
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ratios. Bloombergs comparisons, though based on conventional wisdom, represent another huge RED FLAG in this abuse of y/x ratios.

1. Introduction
A few weeks ago, on April 30, 2013, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City (NYC), in his address on Public Safety to the New York Police Department (NYPD), made the following rather self-flattering comparison of the homicide rates in New York with other major metropolitan areas [1]. City Population Homicides, Homicide Rate m Calculated Bloomberg 2010 US in 2012, y rate, m = referred Homicides figures Census, x y/x per to NYC, (Relative millions 100,000 m/mNYC to NYC) NYC 8.175 419 5.13 1 DC 0.602 88 14.62 2.9 1196 1200 Chic 2.696 506 16.14 3.1 1319 1400 Phil 1.526 329 21.56 4.2 1763 1700 Balt 0.621 217 34.95 6.8 2857 2900 Det 0.714 411 57.58 11.2 4707 4500 LA 3.793 203 14.63 The above projections by Mayor Bloomberg assume, implicitly, that all cities must have essentially the same the homicide rate for comparison. 1 million = 10 times 100,000. See also: http://chicagowarrior.blogspot.com/2013/01/chicagocrime-500-murders-in-2012.html. For NYC, based on 2012 homicides figures, the homicide rate per 100,000 population is m = y/x = 419/81.75 = 5.13 = 5, approx. For Washington D. C. it works out to m 15, or about 3 times the NYC value and so on down the list. So, Bloomberg mentioned each city by name and finally said, .if we had had Detroits murder rate, more than 4,500 New Yorkers would have been murdered last year instead of 419. Thats a factor of ten. With this background lets compare the homicide rates, in NYC, Chicago, and Detroit, the Motor City, also known to be Crime Capital, USA, see Refs. [2-5].
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2. Chicago and Detroit Homicides


Yesterday (June 11), I also came across another piece in Slate magazine about Chicagos falling homicide rates that got me digging a bit deeper into the homicide rates of major US cities. For the first time, I saw the actual number of homicides (y) being used in these discussions, and how these numbers have changed as a function of time (t), rather the y/x ratio used by Bloomberg. From what we learn in elementary calculus, considering the changes in deaths (y) on an annual basis (t = 1 year), is indeed a true measure of the rate change, much like the increase, or decrease, in the speed (or velocity) of a moving vehicle; see Figure A. Speed v = s/t is change in distance (or space) divided by the change in time. The distance-time graph for the moving vehicle is a straight line, if its speed v is constant. A car traveling at 60 mph will cover a distance of 1 mile in 1 second. If a car has a fuel economy of 10 kml (kilometers per liter) and it has just 1 liter of fuel left (the fuel indicator light is on), it will completely run out of gas in the next 10 km and must be refueled before that. Electric vehicles like the Tesla Model S have sophisticated onboard computer systems which monitor the rate of depletion of the batterys charge and thus the range of the vehicle (which depends on a complex set of driving variables) and guide the driver to the nearest charging station. Another well-known rate of change is the marginal tax rate although now there are no time units. The tax owed y increases at a fixed rate as taxable income x increases, since the US tax code is a series of straight line segments with the general equation y = mx + c. The marginal tax rate m applies for a range of taxable income x. The slope m keeps increasing with increasing income. The ratio y/x has no name and is simply the fraction of income paid as taxes (see Babe Ruth article, in the reference list 2012 tax equation). Thus, intrigued by the Chicago-bashing going on in several recent Slate magazine articles, I obtained the following data from the piece by Monica Davey [6] and also got some additional information presented here from the
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Statistical Report by the Chicago Police Department [7] and from the Wikipedia articles on Crimes in Chicago [8] and Crimes in Detroit [9].
300

250

Homicides, y

200

150

y = A + Bt = 7.5t 14,798.5 Slope B = y/t

100

50

0 1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Time t [Calendar years]


Figure A: The nearly constant rate of increase of homicides between 1985 and 2001 observed in Phoenix, AZ. The data was obtained from here which includes data for several metropolitan areas across the world. The population of Phoenix also increased during this time, from 790,000 in 1980 to 1,321,000 in 2000.

Table 1: Homicides data for Chicago and Detroit Year


2013 2012 2011 2010 1991 1974

Chicago
146 506 435 436 927 970

Detroit
411 377 308 615 714

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1200

Homicides in Chicago and Detroit


1000 927

970

Homicides

800 615 600 506 411 400 435 377 308 200 146 436

714

Chicago
Detroit

0 2013 2012 2011 2010 1991 1974

Figure 2: Comparison of the homicides trends (absolute numbers, without any population adjustments, like per 100,000) over the last nearly four decades.
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The bar graph labeled Figure 1 is reproduced from Statistical Reports of the Chicago Police Department. It is the very first graph in that report. Notice the steady decline over the last two plus decades (1991-2011) The bar graph given as Figure 2 is based on information that I was able to put together from the sources just cited.

3. The Big Apple and You Name it!


NYC Mayor Bloombergs boast elicited a spirited response from Detroit Mayor David Bing [2,3]. However, Bloombergs claims were grounded in how we now widely use (or rather abuse, IMHO) simple y/x ratios. I have tried to explain the problem with y/x ratios using baseball stats (see reference list), in particular Detroit Tigers Superstar Miguel Cabreras chase of what looks like a second Triple Crown and also the single season RBI record set in 1930 by Hack Wilson. Babe Ruths legendary batting stats have also been considered in this context, since Babe sets a high standard for excellence in baseball, even today, although others have passed his career home runs record. Babes game-by-game logs reveal (At Bats, Hits) = (x, y) = (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (4, 4) and even (6, 5). This means a single game PERFECT Batting Average BA, y/x = 1/1 = 2/2 = 3/3 = 4/4 = 1.000 in several games, across many seasons. I have not seen a (1, 1) with modern elite players. But, I am digressing too much. The main point is the standard of excellence. That is what Mayor Bloombergs ratio based analysis was all about. That NYC and NYPD is setting the standard for excellence. Let us consider this in more detail now. Is Bloomberg making a valid comparison and is the general argument sustainable, politics aside, based on a purely mathematical analysis of the homicides data? We will return to this point again in 5.

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4. Whats wrong with using the ratio y/x?


As I have mentioned in several articles that can be found on this website, we must be careful when we use y/x ratios, like Mayor Bloomberg did, when we make comparisons without first investigating the nature of the underlying x-y relationship. Just look at the good news for a moment, without this jugglery of y/x ratios, like Mayor Bloomberg did. The number of homicides has been going down. Indeed, it has been going down for a very long time now. For Chicago, it was 395 in 1965 and increased to 970 in 1974 and has been dropping ever since. Figure 1, which shows the decline from 1991 to 2011, is the very first figure from the Statistical Report of the Chicago Police Department. The highest number was 943 in 1992 and in 2012 it was 506, certainly higher than 433 of 2011 but a vast improvement over the numbers for earlier years. Amazingly, there has also been a similar decline in other large cities as well, such as New York and Los Angeles. So, I put together Figure 2 comparing the more recent homicides figures for both Chicago and Detroit. The number of homicides in Phoenix, AZ has decreased to just 123 in 2012. The number of firearms-related homicides, across the US as a whole (the focus of the gun violence debate), has also been decreasing, after reaching a peak of 12,791 deaths in 2006 (click here for the data from CDC); see Figure B. Why cant the media focus on the steady decline in homicides that we have witnessed instead of all the political motivated punditry about crime? I have to congratulate Mayor David Bing of Detroit for his mature response to Mayor Bloomberg by highlighting the reasons for the differences between NYC and Detroit. Of course, Bloomberg was not picking on Detroit, in particular. He was merely boasting about New Yorks record low homicides (which they are and we will see why) and using the conventional wisdom of ratio analysis. Bloomberg was picking every city he chose to pick. If he had picked a few other cities, we will see how a different story emerges.
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13,000

Variable y [homicides in a year]

2006

12,500

12,000

11,500

2001
11,000

2004 2010

2000 1999
285.00 290.00 295.00 300.00 305.00 310.00 315.00

10,500 280.00

US Population (CDC values), x [millions]


Figure B: The decline in firearms-related homicides in the USA since 2006, Data source: Center for Disease Control (CDC). About using their query system, see http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe The updated population values for each year as given by CDC and are used here. It is very simple. If you want to be the best, you must compare yourself with the best, not with the worst. So, in this case, the proper comparison for New York homicide rates is with cities, reasonably large cities, with a low homicide rate, not cities that have a high homicide rate! How is New York doing compared to some of the best of cities with lowest crime rates? How do we make this comparison? The problem, as I have mentioned in many articles (hundreds of reads for each article, some a couple thousands ; see bibliography ) goes back to a
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very simple thing that for some reason no middle or high school math teacher seems to have bothered to emphasize. Or, if they did, none of us seem to have bothered to remember it and apply it in our daily lives. If we have a table of x and y data, like murders and population, we must first study the relation between x and y before blindly using y/x ratios, which is what Mayor Bloomberg is guilty of when he compares NYC with DC or Detroit. These are convenient comparisons for the purpose of political rhetoric but they are not sound mathematical logic as I will show briefly. Hopefully, more will be convinced that I might be on the right track here. When we prepare a x-y graph of our observations, such as the homicides versus population graph, we will often find what appears to be just a scatter. But, if you look carefully beneath it and study this scatter you will find that the data often falls along a straight line with the general equation y = hx + c. In other words, we encounter a nonzero intercept c. What does this means? Now, we have three possibilities. Type I Positive slope h, negative intercept c (h > 0, c < 0): The ratio y/x increases as both x and y increase. Type II: Positive slope h, positive intercept c (h > 0, c > 0): The ratio y/x decreases as both x and y increase, Type I slope is typically less than Type II slope. Type II leads to situations like death rates decreasing while death are increasing, or the number of unemployed increasing with unemployment rate decreasing. Type III: Negative slope h, positive intercept c (h < 0, c > 0): The ratio y/x decreases as x increases and y decreases. The most common example of this traffic fatality studies for US as a whole but here to fluctuations in the rate year over year must be considered (see references cited). The firearms-homicides graph for the US is another. The x-y relations revealed by such a study, as we will see now, provides the proper basis for comparison. Actually, the relation is a more complex one and
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is nonlinear, of the type y = mxne-ax, where m, n, and a are constants to be deduced from the empirical observations. This mathematical model implies that the number of guns-related fatalities (y) going through a maximum, as the time (the variable x) increases. The data for Chicago (see Wikipedia article cited) clearly reveals the existence of such a maximum point (with x here being time) between 1974 (y = 970 homicides) and 1990 (y = 851 homicides) after which there has been a steady decrease; see Figure C.
1200

Variable y [homicides in a year]

1100 1000 900 800 700 600 500

Homicides in Chicago

400
300 200 100 0 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040

Variable x [time in calendar years]


Figure C: The preliminary homicides-time graph for Chicago illustrating a maximum point; see also Chicago Crime Scenes Project (click here). The x-y graph has the equation y = mxne-ax. A good fit to the general trend is observed with m = 340, n = 0.667, a = 0.0476 and the variable x =(t t0) where t = Calendar year 1960 and t0 = 5. With t0 = 0, the curve passes through (0, 0) with x = 0 being year 1960. The offset with t0 = 5, shifts the curve, without changing its shape and offers a better fit to the data. A similar maximum point was observed in the historical study of US traffic fatalities data (see references). A similar maximum point (with two peaks, 1974 and 1993 and trough at 1985) is
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also observed in the graph of murders for the entire state of Illinois if we examine the data for 1960-2011 (click here); see also Philip Bump at the Atlantic Wire here (click here). Read an interesting perception on crime differences between cities (click here). The location of the maximum point on the power-law curve is determined readily since the derivative dy/dx = (n ax)(y/x) is positive for small x < n/a and negative for large x > n/a. The maximum point occurs when dy/dx = 0 or when x = n/a. (For y = xn dy/dx = nxn-1 = n(y/x) and for y = e-ax, dy/dx = -ae-ax). The three types of linear relations mentioned above are local line segments of this general nonlinear curve. To return to our present discussion, Mayor Bloomberg should actually be comparing New York with Austin, TX, or San Jose CA, or San Diego CA, if he really wants to make New York the model city with low crime rates. Each one of the assertions that I have made below will be established using mathematical analysis. It is actually quite simple and involves nothing more than an understanding of the meaning of what I have called the work function using the performance of the best baseball players. This has been discussed in details in other articles. A brief discussion may be found in Appendix 1. We will also cover this briefly in 5. If New York were more like: 1. Austin TX, the number of murders would have dropped to just 270 and if more like, 2. San Diego, the number of murders would have dropped to just 300 and if more like 3. San Jose, the number of murders would have declined to 398. The last may be just 21 less than 419 we homicides in 2012 but it is still a huge improvement, as Bloomberg said in the Press Release. So, lets put all

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the politics aside and see why Bloomberg should really be comparing New York with Austin, TX, or San Jose, CA or San Diego, CA.

Table 2: New York compared with 16 major US cities


City Population, x Homicides, y Homicide 2010 US in 2012 rate, m = y/x Census per 100K (millions)
8.175 3.793 2.696 2.100 1.446 1.327 1.307 1.526 1.198 0.946 0.805 0.818 0.714 0.621 0.602 0.394 0.278 419 203 506 216 123 92 48 329 152 46 68 27 411 217 88 97 92 5.13 14.63 16.14 10.28 8.51 6.93 3.67 21.56 12.69 4.86 8.44 3.30 57.58 34.95 14.62 24.60 33.10

Homicide rate relative to NYC, m/mNYC


1 1.04 3.15 2.01 1.66 1.35 0.72 4.21 2.48 0.95 1.65 0.64 11.23 6.82 2.85 4.80 6.46

New York, NY Los Angeles, CA Chicago, IL Houston, TX Phoenix, AZ San Antonio, TX San Diego, CA Philadelphia, PA Dallas, TX San Jose, CA San Francisco Austin, TX Detroit, MI Baltimore, MD Washington DC Cleveland, OH Newark, NJ

Data source: See References for each city listed at the end of the article.

5. The Homicides-Population (H-P) Diagram for Major US Cities


The number of homicides (y) reported in 2012 by major US cities is plotted as function of the population x in Figure 3. The supporting data for the 16 cities included in this comparison with New York may be found in Table 2. I have also provided a detailed reference list for the sources.

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600

Chicago

B
New York

Homicides (in 2012), y

500

400

Detroit
300

200

Los Angeles San Jose Illustration of the law y = mx or y/x = m


8.00 10.00 12.00

100

Austin
6.00

0 0.00

2.00

4.00

Population (US Census 2010), x [millions]


Figure 3a: The Homicides-Population diagram for 16 major US cities which are being compared here with New Yorks homicide rate in 2012. The population values are from the 2010 US Census (consistent with what Mayor Bloomberg seems to be using, see also Ref. [8]). All of the data essentially falls between the two straight lines, or rays, labeled A and B. We will use the term ray to describe a straight line that passes through the origin (0, 0) like the straight lines A and B do. Ray A with the highest slope, y/x = m = 411/0.714 = 575.81, passes through the (x, y) pair for Detroit. Ray B with the lowest slope, y/x = m = 419/8.175 = 51.25 passes through the (x, y) pair for NY. And, so Mayor Bloomberg does not have his bragging rights. The ratio y/x = m for New York is less than many other cities.

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600

Homicides (in 2012), y

500

400

300

200

100

NYC ray y = mx = 51.25x Case of c = 0

0
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 8.0 9.0 10.0

Population (US Census 2010), x [millions]


Figure 3b: The ray through NYC, with the equation y = mx = 51.25x. This is a special case of the more general equation y = hx + c with c = 0. The data for cities that fall on or close to this line, with lower populations that NYC, are the logical candidates for comparison, not cities with higher murder rates like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, or Washington DC. We can envision such rays passing through every single data point in this diagram. Each city thus has its own ray and the value of the ratio y/x = m. Bloomberg is envisioning Detroit setting the crime rate standard and moving the NY data point to the Detroit Line A, or its extrapolation, and saying, Hey, look we are better than the worst, better than the worse, and also better than the really bad. Thats not a standard of excellence!

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If you want to get admitted to Harvard, or Stanford, or MIT, or Berkley, you dont want to compare your efforts with the efforts made by the kids who are barely getting Cs or Ds or the kid getting Cs and Ds. (Sorry, I know grades dont count in life, only $$$$ do but this still serves as a great example for a country where politicians still about the great American family values and education system, which also got me to these shores a long time ago.) Now, look at the H-P diagram much more carefully. Lets start with our bad boys Detroit and Cleveland (meant in jest here, to keep things lighthearted while also having a serious discussion, no offense intended, please). Actually, I now live in Metro Detroit area. I have also lived on the west side of Cleveland, in the 1980s, while working jointly at Case Western Reserve University and NASA). So, I know these bad boys well. There are still wonderful things that can be said about both these cities. It is the sad decline in the US economy, which has been going for many unseen and unheard for decades prior to the financial crisis of 1988, which led to decline of these cities and their high crime rates now. Amazingly, notice that the (x, y) pair for Cleveland falls practically on the same ray A passing through the Detroit point. Baltimore, another member of the bad boys club, falls just below the ray A. The difference in the number of homicides that we observe is thus entirely due to the differences in the size of the population. Now, lets look at the good guys. The Big Boy here is New York. But, look at Los Angeles (the entire county) with just over 200 homicides, or San Jose, with 46 homicides. San Jose (SJ) is practically on the same line as NY. Austin, TX with only 27 homicides in 2012 (this is the corrected value as mentioned by the Austin Police Department, not 28) falls slightly below the NY-LA-SJ ray. If one were to use Mayor Bloombergs logic again, if NY were more like Austin, with a population of 0.818 million, or one-tenth the NY population, then NY should only have 270 homicides, well below the current 419 homicides. So, Bloomberg has lost all his bragging rights now! I just proved it here using the
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very same arguments, by just looking at the data for a different group of cities. But, the similarity in these trends is not obvious until we prepare the x-y diagram, or the H-P diagram. All of this just goes to show how deep and fundamental a problem that we have created for ourselves by this widespread use of y/x ratios in all walks of life. All that we do is compute literally hundreds, thousands, and millions of such y/x ratios, using modern computing available right now in our laptops or even in the palm of our hands, without ever considering the nature of the underlying x-y relation. The H-P diagram here is a snapshot at a fixed point in time (see my recent discussion of length contraction in Einsteins theory of relativity in E = mc2 article; the last one in reference list, Einstein also considers the snapshot at a fixed point in time). It will change from year to year. But there will always be the two extremes that we have considered here. For that matter, the H-P diagram here should be expanded to include more cities. However, I have considered most of the cities with larger populations. Hence, the conclusions are quite reliable, at this point in time for the US taken as a whole. The reader can now also verify the reasons for the two assertions with respect to San Jose, CA and San Diego, CA. If we examine the rest of the diagram, we see another remarkable pattern. Lets start the other bad boy Chicago. Now we see a group of three cities, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore all falling a virtually a single straight line (see Figure 4), with the general equation y = hx + c where h is the slope of the line and c is the nonzero intercept made by the line. We only need two (x, y) to determine the slope h and intercept c. Using the two extreme values Baltimore-Chicago: y = hx + c = 139x + 130.5 Type II behavior The slope h = (506 217)/(2.696 0.261) = 289/2.075 = 139 Intercept c = y1 hx1 = y2 hx2 = 130.5 since we know h and also (x, y) for each end point. Now, use this equation to predict the homicides for Philly. We get 343, which is quite close to the observed value of 329.
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600

Homicides (in 2012), y

500

400

Slope h

300

200

100

Illustration of the general law y = hx + c Nonzero c

0 0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

7.00

8.00

9.00 10.00

Population (US Census 2010), x [millions]


Figure 4: Illustration of the general linear law y = hx + c relating number of homicides and population. The Type II (h > 0, c > 0) straight line with the equation y = 139x + 130.5 joins the (x, y) pairs for Baltimore and Chicago. A Type I straight line can be envisioned to join the Chicago and DC (x, y) pair. We also see Type III line joining Detroit, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. This is a single year, multi-city diagram, as opposed to the single city, multi-year graph for Chicago (with the maximum point and then a negative trend.) The slope h means that when the population increases by about 1 million the homicides increase by 139. Hence, Philly with a population of roughly one million less than Chicago, or one million more than Baltimore, has about 140 fewer, or higher, homicides. This nonzero c can be thought of like a work function, an idea first conceived by Einstein in 1905 to explain the photoelectric effect. Our modern photo cells use this principle. Einsteins work function is really quite simple and easy to understand. This is also what got Einstein his Noble Prize, not the
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theory of relativity. The photoelectric law (see references for more details) can be written as y = hx + c = K = ( W) = hf W. The maximum energy of the electron (K) is less than the energy of the photon ( = hf = hx), the name given to a particle of light. The missing energy (c = - W) tells us about the difficulty of producing the electron and is called the work function of the metal. The K-f graph for various metals is a series of parallels. For those who have trouble with the Einsteinian physics analogy, we can think of the nonzero c, instead, like the work function that is also observed in baseball, when we analyze the game-by-game batting logs of an elite player like Babe Ruth (remember the standard of excellence). The At Bats-Hits diagram for a baseball player also has the equation y = hx + c where x is the At Bats and y the Hits. The graph is a series of parallels all with the slope h = 1.000 the PERFECT single game batting average (BA). The nonzero c is related to the number of missing hits; see discussion of Babe Ruth, and Miguel Cabreras stats. Thus, the baseball work function tells us about the difficulty of producing hits and why the BA deviates from the ideal value. Besides the skill of the player himself, it also covers many other complex factors related to the fascinating game of baseball. In the same way, the nonzero c in the homicide stats tells us something about the difficulty of observing the event called a homicide in different cities. The evidence here seems to indicate that the crime environment is pretty much the same in the three cities of the present discussion. I am sure criminal experts may have some additional insights to offer based on this theoretical conjecture being advanced here. By the way, I should also caution you here. In a famous conversation with Werner Heisenberg (who enunciated the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Physics), Einstein told a shocked, and much younger, Heisenberg, It is theory that dictates what you can observe. Heisenberg was trying to impress upon Einstein what he had accomplished by constructing a theory for subatomic particles that takes into account only observable phenomena. Then he tried to suggest that Einstein had done the same with his own theory of relativity. To which Einstein, If he had done so, it must be all nonsense. It is theory that
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dictates what we can observe. (click here). In other words, Einstein was willing to discount even his own theory to counter Heisenbergs arguments. City Pairs Population, Homicides, Change, Change True rate, x y x y h = y/x Phoenix, AZ 1.446 123 Washington DC 0.602 88 0.844 35 41.469 San Antonio, TX 1.327 92 San Francisco 0.805 68 0.522 24 45.977 New York, NY 8.175 419 San Jose, CA 0.946 46 7.229 373 51.598 The x-y graph must be prepared first to permit grouping of cities with similar populations to reveal that they follow roughly parallel line. The slope h is per million of population (the per 100,000 slope will be one-tenth). New York and San Jose are connected by the line y = 51.6x 2.811 and so on. The ray through NYC has the equation y = mx = 51.25. In other words, the (x, y) pairs for NYC and San Jose are practically on the same straight line. For Los Angeles (entire county), y = 53.52x. Thus, SJ, LA, NYC fall on practically the same straight line. The other slopes h calculated are not significantly different and makes these essentially parallel lines. Once a theory takes root, empirical observations always seem to follow. At least, I can see the work function in this and many similar problems where we are confronted with large masses (x, y) observations dealing with complex phenomena. Now, if you take a look at the graph again a bit more carefully, you can actually start seeing a number of data points following roughly parallel lines, just as in the At Bats-Hits diagram of a baseball player, or the K-f graphs for various metals in photoelectric experiments. We consider the following (x, y) pairs. Newark-Houston: y = hx + c = 68x + 73.1, or 68 homicides per million Cleveland and Dallas fall virtually on this same line.

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The (x, y) pairs for San Francisco (68 homicides), Washington DC (88 homicides), San Antonio, TX and Phoenix, AZ can all be seen to stagger around another parallel to this Newark-Houston line.

Table 3: New York compared with five major US cities


City
New York, NY Los Angeles Phoenix, AZ San Antonio, TX San Diego, CA San Jose, CA

Population, x Homicides, y
8.175 3.793 1.446 1.327 1.307 0.946 419 203 123 92 48 46

Homicides Prediction, y Rate, m = y/x based on per 100,000 mNYC


5.125 5.352 8.506 6.933 3.673 4.863 419 194 74 68 67 48

500

Ray through NYC y = mx = 51.25x Homicides (in 2012), y


400

300

200

100

0 0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

7.00

8.00

9.00 10.00

Population (US Census 2010), x [millions]


Figure 5a: New York City (NYC) homicide rates is compared here with five other major metropolitan areas that lie close the NYC ray : Los Angeles, CA, Phoenix,
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AZ, San Antonio, TX, San Jose, CA and San Diego, CA. The Homicides-Population diagram here clearly shows that New York is NOT doing much better than Los Angeles (only homicides for the entire LA County, not city of LA is available and is equal to 203 in 2012). It is also not doing much better than San Jose, CA (population 0.946 million, which is higher than the population of Washington DC, at 0.602 million). Actually San Jose had 46 murders, or two less than the 48 murders predicted using the NYC ray, y = mx = 51.25x (m = homicides rate per million). San Diego, CA had an even lower number of murders, 48 versus 67 predicted. Phoenix. AZ and San Antonio, TX are also quite comparable.

500

Homicides (in 2012), y

Type II line NYC-Phoenix y = hx + c = 43.99x + 59.39


400

300

200

100

Type I Parallel (San Diego) y = hx + c = 43.99x - 9.49


1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00

0 0.00

Population (US Census 2010), x [millions]


Figure 5b: An alternative view of the same data presented in Figure 5a. Notice that the (x, y) pairs for NYC, Los Angeles and Phoenix seem to line up nicely along a straight line. Hence, instead of considering New York City (NYC) in isolation, to set the standard for comparison, let us take Phoenix and NYC, the two extremes here. These two cities are joined by a Type II (h > 0, c > 0) straight
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line y = hx + c = 43.99x + 59.39. The slope h is the rate of increases of homicides as the population x increases and is like the marginal tax rate in tax law. Now, we see that Los Angeles with roughly one-half the population of NYC is actually doing much better than NYC. Furthermore, the other three cities with smaller populations are also doing significantly better than NYC with 2012 homicides falling below the NYC-Phoenix reference Line A. Specifically, we can envision a parallel to the NYC-Phoenix Line A passing through San Diego, a Type I line with the equation y = 43.99x 9.49. The nonzero intercept c has changed from a positive to a negative value and this means reduced homicides. This is the significance of the work function mentioned earlier to discuss the significance of the nonzero in the general law y = hx + c relating homicides and population.
500

Homicides (in 2012), y

Type II line NYC-San Antonio y = hx + c = 47.75x + 28.632


400

300

200

100

0 0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

7.00

8.00

9.00 10.00

Population (US Census 2010), x [millions]


Figure 5c: Another alternative view of the data presented in Figure 5a. Instead of Phoenix, we consider San Antonio, TX with a population of 1.327 million, slightly lower than Phoenix. The number of murders was also lower. NYC and SA now define a new reference line with the equation y = 47.75x + 28.632. The slope h is slightly lower and the intercept c has also reduced. LA can be seen to fall
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practically on this NYC-SA line. Again we can envision parallels to this reference line passing through the data points for each of the other cities. The parallel through San Diego is again illustrated and has the equation y = 47.75x 14.41. Again the nonzero intercept c goes from positive to negative. In baseball statistics, we see a similar behavior with the nonzero c clearing being related to the skill of a baseball player. Babe Ruth had a negative c but his Yankee teammate Lou Gehrig had a positive c (both in the 1927 season when Babe Ruth set the single-season home run record of 60 and Lou Gehrig lost the HR race.) Likewise, the nonzero c here is also like a work function and determines the number of homicides (similar to hits produced in baseball). Phoenix falls just above the new reference line chosen here (higher work function). The New York record is compared again in Figure 5, with just five of the cities in Table 2, see also Table 3. This provides, IMHO, a nice framework within which we can focus not only the debate on gun violence but also the more important need to reduce these tragic firearms-related deaths.

6. The Budgets to Fight Violent Crimes


The skewed discussion (in Slate magazine), of the impossibility of sustaining Chicago declining homicide rates, got me thinking about this analysis. Surely budgets for police departments are an extremely important aspect of this type of crime prevention (see also Bings response to Bloomberg). How far does American society want to put the money where the mouth is remains to be seen. It is one thing to talk about sanctity of life and the value of life, even of a child growing in a poor neighborhood, and quite another thing to match it with actual budgets for the police to fight crime in these areas. Studies repeatedly show that the murder rates in areas of concentrated poverty, especially in Chicago (click here ) are known to be higher than in the surrounding least poor areas. The old cop on the beat might surely have spotted some unusual on that street where three young women were held captive in the West side of
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Cleveland for more than two decades. Even if the cop did not, the young women might have noticed the cop making his rounds and made the dash to freedom sooner. We can only speculate.
2500

Variable y [homicides in a year]

Homicides in NYC
2000

1500

1000

500

0 1960

1968

1976

1984

1992

2000

2008

2016

Variable x [time in calendar years]


Figure D: News from the BLUE ROOM (PR-489-12): The Homicides vs. Time graph for NYC prepared using the data from the Press Release on Dec 28, 2012 announcing a new record low in the number of murders in NYC in 2012 (414 as of press release date, final for 2012 was 419). This is the lowest number in the entire history of New York. The biggest drop is from the high in 1990 (2245) to the low in 1998 (633) which was then followed by the more gradual decline. Indeed, Criminal Justice and Psychology Professor, Arthur Lurigio, of Loyola University (in Chicago) recommends the long term (or permanent) assignment of police officers to the same beats, especially in Chicagos so called murder corridor, to encourage regular interactions between residents and cops and promote a more trusting relationship. Only when we are ready
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to take such steps, instead of indulging in politically-motivated mocking of the sustainability of downward homicide trends, will things change for real. All of the 13 murders committed in the first 9 days of the New Year (2013), in Chicago, were black-on-black murders in the poorest of neighborhoods (click here; Chicago on pace for 527 killings in 2013, if it is sustained). The difference is what America what it is. Just see what has been accomplished in NYC, Figure D. The same applies to many other major cities across the country and also for the US as a whole. Lofty rhetoric did not get us far. But, a little compassion for our fellow human beings and their plights will - be it for those women in the attic, or the long term unemployed dad, or the increasing millions of young college graduates who are unemployed (and becoming unemployable since they have not gained any job experience). All we have to do is take the first step. The cost-cutting mantra drove a once great company (the old) General Motors into bankruptcy, because it was a bankrupt philosophy which puts no premium on the future of the company. The same philosophy of cost-cutting, in the government, we call it budget cuts, will drive this great country also into ruin. Icelanders have spoken and voted the austerity guys out of office. Will Americans learn from the Iceland example? Japan with the highest Debt/GDP ratios that the developed world has seen is shown signs of prosperity again after nearly two decades of Debt/GDP ratio well over 100% and reaching nearly 215% in 2012. The comparison with Iceland is quite apt since Icelanders voted their version of the Republicans out of office (for getting them into their financial mess around the same time in 2008). The Democrats version of Icelandic politicians outdid the Republicans and imposed austerity programs without paying attention to the suffering of the vast Icelandic majority. Now, they got the boot too and Republicans who got the mess started have now promised a change of heart and vow to out-Democrat the Democrats.
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Let me say no more. I just observe, and analyze data. And, I know the theory. All the observations seem to fall in place. Yet, no else seems to see the pattern that I can see, written over the broad landscape of the financial world, the economics world, the social, political, and cultural, and environmental trends, that all beg the use of x-y diagrams such as those I have advocated here. Economics is a dismal science for a reason. It primarily uses such dismal y/x ratios. Whatever happened to that great idea of marginal tax rate, or the use of the slope h = y/x that is the foundation of all tax laws? Let me repeat once more, if y = hx + c, the ratio y/x = h + (c/x) can either increase or decrease in complicated ways (six ways) as x increases or decreases. This is the reason for the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics! (Click here for latest use for homicides). Right now, nobody is thinking about any x-y relations, or preparing the x-y diagrams like we have done here. The entire US tax code can be reduced to the equation y = mx + c (click here) where the slope m of the straight line relating taxable income (x) to taxes owed (y) is the marginal tax rate. This fixed tax rate (m) applies for a range of incomes (called the tax bracket) and keeps on increasing as (taxable) incomes increase. One can only wonder what would happen if all citizens had been encouraged to use this tax equation, instead of the dumbed down tax tables. Perhaps, then the true significance of the ratios y/x and m = dy/dx or y/x would have been understood by all. It is still not too late. Just keep staring at Figures 3 and 5 and other related illustrations here. A new view of gun deaths across America will emerge. It is that simple.

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7. Predicting Chicagos year-end Homicides for 2013


I am doing this here since, during his excellent discussion about Chicago crime myths, Professor Lurigio states that homicides cannot be predicted. Perhaps, he is referring to the common use (or what I call abuse) of the y/x ratio. If we use the y/x ratio (homicides per day), we will invariably end up with wrong predictions. However, if we use the slope y/x, which is the proper measure of the rate of change (like the instantaneous speed of a moving vehicle v = s/t as opposed to the ratio s/t where s is the total space covered or the distance traveled and t is the total time for the journey), we will get more accurate predictions. I have discussed this recently with baseball statistics, and Detroit Tigers Cabreras potential run at a second Triple Crown and the Hack Wilson single season RBI record. Let us see how this works out as the year progresses. There are two plausible scenarios emerging as illustrated in Figure E. First, the (x, y) pairs for the first nine days (9, 13) and the first four months (120, 97) yield y = 0.7568x + 6.189 and the year-end projection, when x = 365, is 282 homicides (red dot). However, this is an uncharacteristically low value for Chicago, although the first four months of 2013 is the first time, since 1962, that Chicago had less than 100 homicides (click here). We already see the data at the end of May and June 2013 deviating from this line. The other extreme is to use the data (9, 13) and (31, 43) for just the month of January 2013. The first nine days of the New Year were the worst in years with 13 homicides. The month of January ended with 43 homicides. This yields y = 1.364x + 0.727 with a year-end prediction of y = 498 when x = 365. This is indicated by the solid blue dot.
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The first nine days, considered alone, would put Chicago on pace for 527 homicides in 2013 since 13/9 = 1.444 and so for x = 365, y = 527.

550

Variable y [homicides to date]

500 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

Variable x [time in days in 2013]


Figure E: Data source: http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/date/2013/5/ for the month-by-month homicides and also news stories (click here). Predicting year end homicides for Chicago based on the first four months. If the data in the coming months start deviating even more towards the upper line, Chicago would approach the melancholy 500 mark by year end. Let us see how the simple math analysis captures this extremely complicated problem. (I also performed a linear regression analysis, using only data for the first four months which yields y = 0.679x + 15.82 and the year-end prediction of only 264 when x = 365.)

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Note:

After many hours of futile searches I have still not been to find the missing data in the graph for Chicago, between 1960 to 1990. Many websites only seem to be giving the run around. The data for Illinois is available from 1960 but for Chicago, only from 1985. I really wish some of the sources cited had made things (especially LA where I still cannot find the figure for the City of LA, only LA County is given) a bit easier by providing also a running historical tally of homicides, along with the population figures (with per 100,000 rates are used), just like the US government does with its Budget. Yes! Surprise we can learn from what the US government does. We have receipts, outlays and surpluses (or deficits) all the way to George Washington. Well, I have made my suggestion. It is very simple. We are dealing with precious lives lost, both young and old, and what policies can best addressed this tragic and avoidable loss of life. If deaths due to cancer, or heart disease, are a concern and engage our national attention (to name just a couple prominent examples), then firearms related homicides and suicides must also engage our attention. Unlike cancer or heart disease, a homicide can take away a very young life, in a moment. This is also what Mayor Bloomberg was talking about when he was addressing the NYPD and the difference the NYC police were making in the lives of real people.

8. Conclusions
My writing of this article coincides with the six month mark of the Newtown, CT, elementary school shootings that shocked the nation and the world. This is a follow up on the recent articles on firearms-related deaths where I have also analyzed the extensive data on gun violence presented by Gerney, Parsons, and Posner (America Under the Gun, click here). This article is also a natural outcome of my long term interest in how simple y/x ratios behave and how we use them, or often abuse them. Mayor Bloombergs comparisons therefore immediately caught my attention. Society has changed in the last 50+ years. Society is changing. Thus, we cannot overlook the fact that:
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a) Homicides have been going down in NYC for a long time now, after reaching a peak in 1990 (with 2245 homicides). The most dramatic drop was between 1992 and 2000 and this has continued yielding the record low number of just 419 in 2012. b) The same trend of decreasing homicides is observed in other major cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. c) Police Departments in other cities have actually learned valuable lessons from NYPD and applied them to reduce the tragic effects of gang wars and resulting senseless deaths. d) If we wish to devote resources to reduce traffic fatalities (by improving vehicle safety features, highway engineering and vigorous enforcement of common sense traffic laws, such as seat belt laws), we can do the same with firearms-related deaths. Actually, as discussed in other articles the firearms suicides/homicides ratio is in excess of 1 for 36 of the 44 states for which data is currently available. e) Efforts to reduce cancer deaths (smoking bans, for example) and deaths due to heart disease and diabetes (emphasis on changes in personal habits such as exercise and diet) have all resulted in personal behavior modifications. The same applies if we are serious about reducing firearms-related deaths. The willingness to make personal changes, for the greater common good, is the central message of all the above listed types of fatalities that have engaged our attention in recent years. This seems to be sorely lacking in the current debate on gun violence. Reducing these fatalities is as URGENT a matter as reducing the other types of fatalities mentioned above. Perhaps, we do NOT feel this could happen to US. It is always US with the other types of fatalities. But, it is always THEM when it comes to firearms-related deaths. Perhaps, herein lies the unrecognized problem. Remember, that the firearms suicides data is telling us very clearly that Americans are NOT just killing each other with their guns. More are blowing their own brains off especially in the quite neighborhoods, away from the large metropolitan cities, across all states.
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We need a National Gun Safety Act, just like the National Traffic Safety Act. We will have it when these facts begin to enter into the American consciousness. It was legislation that led (or at least believed to have led), to a reduction in many types of deaths. Gun violence and related deaths (both homicides and suicides) are just as preventable as traffic fatalities, deaths due to smoking and cancer, in general, and other leading causes of deaths like heart disease and diabetes. Right now, it is all partisan rhetoric and outright Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics and Hate! Finally, going beyond gun violence and the comparison of the homicide rates in various US cities, the discussion here is also aimed at calling attention to a serious systemic problem with all types of data analysis where we use y/x ratios (especially financial and economic data, and our observations on various social, political, cultural, and environmental trends). Important conclusions are being drawn and policies are being formulated, as shown here, by relying on y/x ratios without a full understanding of the nature of the x-y relations.

*******************************************

Appendix 1: Illustrating the Idea of a Work Function


The idea of a work function W was first conceived by Einstein to explain a puzzling aspect of the photoelectric effect. Lenards observations showed that when light shines on the surface of a metal electrons are liberated. These electrons can be collected and made to flow in an electrical circuit. However, no electrons are produced if the frequency of light is less than a minimum, or cut-off, value. Increasing the intensity of light did not make any difference. These results could not be explained on the basis of Maxwells wave theory of light, according to which light is a form electromagnetic disturbance in the
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ether. These points are also discussed by Millikan (see references), in the introduction to his 1916 papers on the photoelectric effect. Einsteins photoelectric law, which was tested experimentally by Millikan, provides a simple solution to this puzzling observation. In his 1905 paper, Einstein first shows (by considering a property of light radiation known as the entropy, see Neuenschwander in references) that light can be viewed as a stream of particles, each having the elementary energy quantum , conceived just a few years ago by Planck, in 1900. As applied to photoelectricity, this means that the maximum kinetic energy K of the electron produced will be less than and is given by K = W where W is the work function for the metal, the minimum energy that is needed to produce the electron. The quantity W represents the energy that must be given up to overcome the forces binding the electron to the metal. Since = hf, this means that the maximum kinetic energy K = hf W = h(f f0), which is a linear equation of the type y = hx + c. Here h is the Planck constant and f is the frequency of light and W = hf0. The cut-off frequency observed by Lenard is thus the physical manifestation of the work function of the metal. From an experimental standpoint, the theory as proposed by Einstein means that The K-f graph for a metal is a straight line with the slope h. The K-f graph for different metals is a series of parallels, with the slope h, and an intercept c = - W. As discussed in the main text, exactly similar conclusions can be drawn when we consider the game-by-game batting stats of a baseball player. The At bats versus Hits graph is also a series of parallels, having the slope h = 1.000 and the intercept c = 0, -1, -2, etc. being the number of missing hits. The nonzero c is thus the work function for a baseball player. Likewise, the nonzero c observed when we analyze our (x, y) observations on many different problems of interest to us can also be thought of as a work function. In each case, the work function tells us something about the difficulty of observing the event of interest: the production of an electron, the production of a hit (or home runs, if home runs are analyzed), or the event
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known as a homicide in gun violence studies. This is illustrated in Figure 6 with the 2012 homicides data for the ten most dangerous cities, see Ref. [29]. Flint, MI, with a population of 101,632, or about 0.1 million, with 63 homicides and 2729.5 violent crimes (murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assaults) was ranked as the most dangerous city in the US, based on the y/x ratio analysis with the denominator x being the population. Since Flint has the lowest population among the other cities used in this comparison, its homicide rate, and the violent crimes rate is also the highest. This is illustrated by the ray A passing through the (x, y) pair for Flint, in Figure 6. The ray A has the equation y = mx and passes through the origin. For Flint m = y/x = 619.88 homicides per million (or 62 per 100,000).
600

Homicides (in 2012), y

500

400

300

200

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0 0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

Population, x [millions]
Figure 6: Illustration of the idea of a work function in gun violence studies. The homicides and population data for the ten most dangerous US cities as reported by the FBI. The data was compiled by Weigley, Hess, and Sauter, see Refs. [29,30]. The raw data for the Top ten can be found in Ref. [29].

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The ray A passing through the Flint (x, y) pair serves as a reference. The data for all the other cities, including Detroit and Memphis, falls below this ray. We can envision similar rays for each city, i.e., straight lines which join the (x, y) pair back to the origin. This is what we do now, with y/x ratio analysis. Instead, we can envision a series of parallels through the data set, with the general equation y = hx + c where h = 619.88, as for Flint. However the nonzero intercept c < 0 and this means, after adjusting for the differences in population, the number of homicides observed is lower in each of these cities, compared to Flint. The nonzero c is the work function. It tells us something about the crime environment, just like the environment in which a baseball player produces hits or home runs, or the environment in a metal from which electrons are produced. The Homicides-Population diagram also reveals relationships between apparently dissimilar cities. For example, Detroit, MI, Birmingham, AL, and New Haven, CT are seen to fall on essentially the same parallel, each with lower murders than Flint, after accounting for the population difference. The work function is the same for all these cities. If the population increases by x, the murders increase by y = hx; the rate of increase of murders h = y/x is a constant. Notice also that the data for other cities seem to line up along roughly parallel lines to the main reference line. Baltimore (219 murders) and Cleveland (84 murders) are joined by a line with the slope h = (219 84)/(0.625 0.394) = 583 which is roughly the same as the slope h = m = 620 for the ray through Flint. The same applies for Stockton, CA and Oakland, CA which fall on a roughly parallel line with the slope h = 548 murders per million. The lower total homicides observed in NYC (419 in 2012) is thus due to the reduced work function. NYC is, of course, outside the scale of the graph in Figure 6 which considers only cities with populations under one million. The work function thus encompasses many complex factors such poverty rate, the unemployment rate, the presence of gangs, the population density, the gap between the haves and the have-nots [31,32]. The effects of all these
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variables cannot be quantified easily. However, the idea of work function, and the numerical value of the nonzero intercept c could serve as a valuable tool to quantify these factors.

Appendix 2: If NYCs Borough Were Their Own Cities


What we know as the City of New York actually consists of five boroughs [33,34], each so big that if they were their own cities, they were rank among the top 10 cities in the USA by population [35]; see table below. The calculations presented here also show how our perceptions are affected by the y/x ratios. For example, both Queens and Manhattan are actually safer than Staten Island, after duly adjusting for population. Table 4: The NYC Boroughs Compared to Other Major US Cities NYC Borough or Population 2010 2012 Homicides City US Census Los Angeles 3,792,621 203 Chicago 2,707,120 506 Brooklyn 2,504,700 151 Queens 2,230,725 84 Houston 2,145,146 216 Manhattan 1,585,873 63 Philadelphia 1,536,471 329 Phoenix 1,445,632 123 Bronx 1,385,108 113 State Island 468,730 8 Boston 625,087 57 NYC 8,175,136 419 Data Sources: See Reference list at the end of the article. Homicides rate, y/x per 100,000 19.44 13.81 6.02 3.76 10.07 3.96 21.41 8.51 8.17 1.79 9.12 5.125

The single (x, y) for New York City can thus be broken up into five(x, y) pairs for the individual boroughs. This is illustrated in Figure 7. The homicides rates, the ratio y/x, for the individual boroughs vary from a low of 1.79 per 100,000 for Staten Island to a high of 8.17 per 100,000 for Bronx. Nonetheless,
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the data points scatter around, rather tightly, along the NYC ray with the equation y = mx = 5.125 where m = 5.125 per 100,000 is the murder rate for NYC as a whole, used by Mayor Bloomberg in his comparisons.
600

y = mx = 51.25x

Homicides (in 2012), y

500

400

NYC

300

Brooklyn
200

Bronx
100

Queens Manhattan
2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00 10.00 12.00

0 0.00

Population, x [millions]
Figure 7: The break down NYC murders for the five boroughs. The data for the five boroughs is scattered around the ray for NYC with the equation y = mx, with Brooklyn and Bronx falling above the ray and Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island falling below the ray. The raw data can be found in Refs. [33-35]. Instead of associating individual rays, or murder rates y/x, like we now do, with each borough, we could think of the five boroughs as falling on parallels to the NYC ray with Bronx and Brooklyn having a positive intercept c and Queens and Manhattan having a negative intercept c, as illustrated in Figure 8. The idea of a work function can thus be associated with what we think as more dangerous, or less dangerous, cities or boroughs. An interesting insight offered by this idea of a work function is that Queens is actually safer than Staten Island, with lower total murders, after adjusting
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for the population. The murder rate y/x leads to the opposite conclusion (Staten Island is safer with lower per capita murders). This can be appreciated from the following. The parallel passing through the Staten Island data has the equation y = 51.25x 15.658. Substitute x = 0.469 in this equation and we get y = 8, the number of murders observed for Staten Island. Now extrapolate along this Staten Island parallel to the value x = 2.231, the population for Queens and we get y = 99 murders for Queens. But, the actual murders observed were 84 and hence Queens is actually safer than Staten Island, given the higher population. The same goes for Manhattan with 63 murders instead of 66 predicted if Manhattan were to fall on the Staten Island parallel.
500

Homicides (in 2012), y

400

y = 51.25x + 42.14

300

200

y = 51.25x 30.55

100

-100 0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

7.00

8.00

9.00 10.00

Population, x [millions]
Figure 8: Illustration of a work function for the NYC boroughs. Bronx, with the c = 42.14 (slope m for NYC is per million) defines the upper limit of murders. Brooklyn falls below this parallel and is thus safer, with lower murders after adjusting for the population. Queens and Manhattan fall on the lower parallel
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with Queens setting the lower limit with c = - 30.55. Queens is actually safer than Staten Island, after adjusting for the population. And, so is Manhattan. What does this mean? What was the reason for the 8 murders observed in 2012 in Staten Island? Staten Island should become totally murder free! That is what NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg should be looking forward to and that would represent the kind of progress that we should all be looking forward to.

Reference List
1. News from the Blue Room, For Immediate Release, April 30, 2013, http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3da f2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc _name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F201 3a%2Fpr151-13.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1 Last year, we had a
record low 419 murders. If instead we had had Washington, DCs murder rate, nearly 1,200 New Yorkers would have been murdered last year instead of 419. If we had Chicagos murder rate, more than 1,400 New Yorkers would have been murdered last year instead of 419. If we have Philadelphias murder rate, more than 1,700 New Yorkers would have been murdered last year instead of 419. If we had Baltimores, it would have been more than 2,900 murders last year. And if we had had Detroits murder rate, more than 4,500 New Yorkers would have been murdered last year instead of 419. Thats a factor of ten. Not only are you saving all those lives by preventing those murders, youre also keeping young people from going to jail and to prison.

2. Mayor Michael Bloombergs Detroit Comments Compare Citys Crime Stats with New York, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/mayor-bloombergdetroit_n_3188383.html 3. Bing: Bloombergs murder rate comments sad, inappropriate, by David Shepardson, the Detroit, News, April 30, 2013, http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130430/METRO01/304300422 4. Detroit Tops The 2012 List Of Americas Most Dangerous Cities, Forbes Magazine, by Daniel Fisher, Published October 18, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/10/18/detroit-tops-thePage | 38

2012-list-of-americas-most-dangerous-cities/ Actual murders not stated, only population and per 100,000 rate. 5. Americas 10 Deadliest Cities in 2012, by Lauren Galick,
http://www.policymic.com/articles/22686/america-s-10-deadliest-cities-2012

6. Chicago Tactics Put Major Dent in Killing Trends, by Monica Davey, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/us/chicago-homicides-fall-by-34percent-so-far-this-year.html?pagewanted=all 7. Chicago Police News Desk Statistical Report https://portal.chicagopolice.org/portal/page/portal/ClearPath/News/Stat istical%20Reports/Murder%20Reports Click on 2011 Report to find the graph reproduced here. 8. Crime in Chicago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Chicago 9. Crime in Detroit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Detroit 10. List of United States Cities Population,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

11. Washington DC Finishes 2012 with fewer than 100 homicides, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/01/nation/la-na-nn-washington-dc2012-homicides-20130101 12. Philadelphias murder rate up slightly in 2012 http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local//region/49034-in-2012philadelphias-murder-rate-rises-slightly 13. The Baltimore Sun, http://data.baltimoresun.com/bingmaps/homicides/ 14. The LA Times Homicides Project, see LA County figure of 203, City of LA must be even lower http://www.lacountymurders.com/pyear_stats.cfm ; the murder maps may look pretty but are useless without legends which give the actual numbers at least for City of LA. Cant believe the software developer incorporate this detail! 15. HPD Calls Houstons Murder Rate Incredibly Low, http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-s2012-murder-total-incredibly-low-4158736.php 16. Crime Rates for San Antonio, TX, Neighborhood Scout, http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tx/san-antonio/crime/#data Both the rape and the murder rates (per 1000) for San Antonio, TX, were higher than for US; since it was not clear if the stats were for 2012, decided to check another source. Population given as 1,359,758 in line with the 2010 census.
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17. Murder City: Police Stats Show 2012 Had More Kills in San Antonio, http://sacurrent.com/news/murder-city-police-stats-show-2012-hadmore-kills-in-san-antonio-1.1433130 Justifiable homicides jumped from 6 to 15 and 92 murder cases opened for homicides 18. Death at the gun range, Jan 24, 2013, by Michael Washburn, http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/blog/article/death-at-the-gunrange-five-firearm-deaths-in-firearm-friendly-environments/index.html 19. Dallas sees rise in murder but 2012 still lowest in decades, http://www.dallasnews.com/news/communitynews/dallas/headlines/20130102-dallas-sees-rise-in-murders-but-2012total-among-lowest-in-decades.ece 20. Why so many murders sin Chicago? By Aaron M. Renn, http://www.newgeography.com/content/003456-why-are-there-somany-murders-chicago Author says LA 29 murders I got 555 murders for LA from Homicides Project; check it out. 21. Analysis: Despite Record Homicide Numbers San Jose Still Relatively Safe, by Robert Salonga, http://www.mercurynews.com/crime22. Austin Police Department, Crime http://austintexas.gov/resident/crime Look under Annual Crime and Traffic Reports 2011 (may take some navigating) latest year for which numbers are available. Since annual report for 2011 was issued in November 2012, official 2012 figures will not available for a few months. Link to the final page I got to is here http://austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/2011_crime_and_traffic_re port__final__111512.pdf 23. City of Phoenix, Monthly Count of Actual Offenses known to Police, http://phoenix.gov/webcms/groups/internet/@inter/@dept/@police/do cuments/web_content/097388.pdf Figures for calendar year 2012, Murder plus non-negligent manslaughter equals 123, manslaughter by negligence 4 and total criminal homicides 127. 24. Annual Report of Chicago Police Department 1967, http://chicagocop.lapa1961.com/resources/documents_archive/cpd_annu al_reports/Chicago%20Police%20Department%20Annual%20Report%20 -%201967.pdf 1966 and 1967 murders 649 and 741, respectively; see also http://chicagocop.lapa1961.com/htm/history/documents_archive/cpd_an nual_reports.htm#1960%27s Likewise for many other years. 25. Chicago Police Department Reports, for several years http://chicagocop.lapa1961.com/htm/history/documents_archive/cpd_an nual_reports.htm#1960%27s
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courts/ci_22289797/analysis-despite-record-homicide-numbers-san-jose-still

26. Why do Murder Rates Spike in Some Cities and Plumett in Others? By Jake Blumgart, Next City, January 9, 2013, http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/why-murder-rate-spike-in-some-citiesand-plummet-in-others 27. Bronx Borough Presidents Office http://bronxboropres.nyc.gov/pdf/bronx%20murder-rate-data-2013-0123.pdf Provides list of 2012 murders in 15 cities, including NYC and Bronx borough, and their population. 28. USA Murder Rate at Record Low, by Rick Nevin, May 15, 2013, http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/USA_Murder_Rate_at_Historic_Record _Low.pdf This study emphasis lead exposure risks during pre-school years with declining homicides rates. To quote, Lead exposure trends have presaged USA homicide trends with a 21-year time lag, reflecting the behavioral impact of early childhood neurodevelopmental damage when those children reach peak ages of homicide offending in their late teens and early 20s. 29. FBI Data ranks Flint, Detroit highest on Most Dangerous Cities in America list, June 14, 2013, Includes data for the Top ten, http://www.freep.com/article/20130614/NEWS05/306140059/FBIdata-ranks-Flint-Detroit-highest-Most-Dangerous-Cities-America-list 30. The Most Dangerous Cities in America, 2013, by Samuel Weigley, Alexander E. M. Hess, and Michael B. Sauter, 24/7 Wall St.com http://homes.yahoo.com/news/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-america-2013-201732579.html Data on Violent Crimes (murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault). 31. Why 3 of Americas Most Dangerous Cities are in Connecticut? Ctpost.com By Pamela Engel, June 14, 2013, http://www.ctpost.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Why-3-OfAmerica-s-Most-Dangerous-Cities-Are-In-4601714.php Connecticut cities
Bridgeport, New Haven, and Hartford are all among the 25 most dangerous cities in America, according to our analysis of violent crime per capita. What's wrong with Connecticut? First of all, the state faces a growing gang problem.

32. The 25 Most Dangerous Cities of America, Business Insider, By Ann Margaret Warner, Erin Fuchs, and Gus Lubin, June 13, 2013, http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-cities-in-america-2013-

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6?utm_source=hearst&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=allverticals#2 5-milwaukee-wis-1 33. New York City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City with population of each borough (July 2012 estimates) 34. USA: New York City Boroughs, http://www.citypopulation.de/php/usanewyorkcity.php Populations of all boroughs, 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2012 35. If NYCs Boroughs Were their Own Cities, http://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/population-nyc-borough/

References to Related Articles on Various Topics


The two Bibliography lists include detailed links to articles on various related topics with only a few being listed here. 36. Bibliography - I, Articles on Extension of Plancks Ideas and Einsteins Ideas beyond physics, Compiled on April 16, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/136492067/Bibliography-Articles-on-theExtension-of-Planck-s-Ideas-and-Einstein-s-Ideas-on-Energy-Quantum-totopics-Outside-Physics-by-V-Laxmanan 37. Bibliography - II, Articles on Extension of Plancks Ideas and Einsteins Ideas beyond physics, Compiled on June 14, 2013, Published on June 15, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/147955814/Bibliography-II-of-VLaxmanan-Articles-on-the-Extension-of-Planck%E2%80%99s-andEinstein%E2%80%99s-Ideas-Beyond-Physics-with-Examples-from-theObservations-on-Finan 38. Babe Ruths 1923 Batting Statistics and Einsteins Work Function, Published April 17, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/136489156/BabeRuth-s-1923-Batting-Statistics-and-Einstein-s-Work-Function 39. Babe Ruth Batting Statistics and Einsteins Work Function, To be Published April 17, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/136556738/BabeRuth-Batting-Statistics-and-Einstein-s-Work-Function 40. Trust Me, the Financial World will Change Forever if Wall Street Starts Analyzing Financial Data like we do Baseball Stats, Published May 26, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/143781795/Trust-Me-the-Financial-

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World-will-change-forever-if-Wall-Street-starts-analyzing-financial-datalike-we-do-baseball-stats-Miguel-Cabrera 41. What is Wrong with Ratio Analysis? Baseball Offers an Interesting Example with Wide Applications, Published May 31, 2013. http://www.scribd.com/doc/144798463/What-is-Wrong-With-RatioAnalysis-Baseball-Offers-an-Interesting-Example-with-Wider-Applications 42. Is Miguel Cabrera on Pace to Break Hack Wilsons Single-Season RBI Record?, Published May 28, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/144083838/Is-Miguel-Cabrera-on-Pace-toBreak-Hack-Wilson-s-Single-Season-RBI-Record-YES-Can-I-Changed-MyMind-on-This-Read-On-Now 43. Fundamental Concepts in Data Analysis, Published May 29, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/144351498/Fundamental-Concepts-in-DataAnalysis

Physics References on Einsteins Photoelectric law


1. On Cathode Rays, Nobel Lecture, May 28, 1906, by Philip Lenard, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1905/lenardlecture.pdf The puzzling aspects of Lenards findings in photoelectricity are explained by Einsteins photoelectric law (specifically, the cut-off frequency which also means a lack of dependence on the intensity of light radiation) and are also discussed very nicely by Millikan. On a heuristic point of view about the creation and conversion of light, by A. Einstein, 1905, Einsteins original paper which showed light can be viewed as particles with fixed energy quanta,
http://www.ffn.ub.es/luisnavarro/nuevo_maletin/Einstein_1905_heuristic.pdf

2.

3.

4.

On a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light, Paper 5, in Einsteins Miraculous Year: Five Papers that changed the face of physics, Princeton Univ. Press (1998). http://press.princeton.edu/einstein/materials/light_quanta.pdf Einsteins Quanta, Entropy, and the Photoelectric Effect, by Dwight E. Neuenschwander, Excellent discussion about how Einstein arrives at his conception of light quanta from the property called entropy possessed by
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radiation in the form light,


http://www.sigmapisigma.org/radiations/2004/elegant_connections_f04.pdf

5.

Einsteins Photoelectric Equation and Contact Electromotive Force, by R. A. Millikan (click here), Phys. Rev., Vol. VII, No. 1 (1916), Second Series, pp. 18-32. In this first paper, published in 1916, Millikan provides only two data points (V0 and f values) for the experiments with lithium metal. 6. A Direct Photoelectric determination of the Plancks h, by Robert A Millikan, (click here) Phys. Rev. Vol. VII No. 3 (1916), Second Series, pp. 355-390 http://mapageweb.umontreal.ca/leonelli/PHY3320/millikan.pdf More detailed experiments with lithium (5 data points) and sodium (6 data points) are presented in this second paper, also published in 1916. 7. The electron and light quant from experimental point of view, May 23, 1924, Nobel Lecture, by Robert Millikan, see Figure 4 on page 63, for experiments with sodium. The straight line graph for photoelectric experiments confirms Einsteins law. The slope of the graph gives the universal Planck constant h, one of the fundamental constants of nature. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1923/millika n-lecture.pdf 8. The Photoelectric Effect, by M. Brandl, Project PhysNet, http://www.ifsc.usp.br/~lavfis/BancoApostilasImagens/ApEfFotoeletrico /The%20Photoelectric%20Effect%20-%20m213.pdf See sketch on page 5 showing parallel lines (K-f graph) for sodium and potassium. 9. Focus: Centennial Focus, Millikans Measurement of the Planck constant, Phys. Rev. Focus 3, 23 (1999), April 22, 1999, by Gerald Holton, http://physics.aps.org/story/v3/st23 10. The Millikan experiment to verify the Photoelectric relationship, http://tap.iop.org/atoms/quantum/502/file_47016.pdf 11. Photoelectric Effect, http://physics.tutorvista.com/modernphysics/photoelectric-effect.html 12. Theoretical concepts in physics, by M. S. Longair, Cambridge University Press (1984). http://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Concepts-PhysicsAlternative-Reasoning/dp/052152878X Chapters 9 to 15 (case studies IV and V) and also chapters under Case Study II (Maxwell equations and

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electromagnetism) are highly recommended and cover the Planck and Einstein laws which are actually founded upon Maxwells work. 13. Quantum Mechanics, Heisenberg and Einstein (1925-1927), http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p07c.htm 14. How Einstein Himself Derives the Worlds Most Famous Equation, E = mc2, Published June 8, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/146483302/How-Einstein-Himself-Derivesthe-World-Most-Famous-Equation

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About the author V. Laxmanan, Sc. D.


The author obtained his Bachelors degree (B. E.) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Poona and his Masters degree (M. E.), also in Mechanical Engineering, from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, followed by a Masters (S. M.) and Doctoral (Sc. D.) degrees in Materials Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. He then spent his entire professional career at leading US research institutions (MIT, Allied Chemical Corporate R & D, now part of Honeywell, NASA, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), and General Motors Research and Development Center in Warren, MI). He holds four patents in materials processing, has co-authored two books and published several scientific papers in leading peer-reviewed international journals. His expertise includes developing simple mathematical models to explain the behavior of complex systems. While at NASA and CWRU, he was responsible for developing material processing experiments to be performed aboard the space shuttle and developed a simple mathematical model to explain the growth Christmas-tree, or snowflake, like structures (called dendrites) widely observed in many types of liquid-to-solid phase transformations (e.g., freezing of all commercial metals and alloys, freezing of water, and, yes, production of snowflakes!). This led to a simple model to explain the growth of dendritic structures in both the groundbased experiments and in the space shuttle experiments. More recently, he has been interested in the analysis of the large volumes of data from financial and economic systems and has developed what may be called the Quantum Business Model (QBM). This extends (to financial and economic systems) the mathematical arguments used by Max Planck to develop quantum physics using the analogy Energy = Money, i.e., energy in physics is like money in economics. Einstein applied Plancks ideas to describe the photoelectric effect (by treating light as being composed of particles called photons, each with the fixed quantum of energy conceived by Planck). The mathematical law deduced by Planck, referred to here as the generalized power-exponential law, might
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actually have many applications far beyond blackbody radiation studies where it was first conceived. Einsteins photoelectric law is a simple linear law and was deduced from Plancks non-linear law for describing blackbody radiation. It appears that financial and economic systems can be modeled using a similar approach. Finance, business, economics and management sciences now essentially seem to operate like astronomy and physics before the advent of Kepler and Newton. Finally, during my professional career, I also twice had the opportunity and great honor to make presentations to two Nobel laureates: first at NASA to Prof. Robert Schrieffer (1972 Physics Nobel Prize), who was the Chairman of the Schrieffer Committee appointed to review NASAs space flight experiments (following the loss of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986) and second at GM Research Labs to Prof. Robert Solow (1987 Nobel Prize in economics), who was Chairman of Corporate Research Review Committee, appointed by GM corporate management.

Cover page of AirTran 2000 Annual Report


Can you see that plane flying above the tall tree tops that make a nearly perfect circle? It requires a great deal of imagination to see and to photograph it.

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