When most people think about what it takes to fight crime, not a lot of them think about the math that actually goes into it. This paper outlines and gives examples of how math is used every day in police work.
When asking students what they think about math many will say that it’s boring, or that they will never use it in life. Math may seem very different from the unpredictable and highly relevant business of fighting crime, but in fact math is very relevant to determining the truth of what happened during a crime. The use of math is essential to many of the methods police use to solve crime, including dealing with fingerprints, computer and phone tracking, and eliminating possible suspects in a crime.
Police are faced with many challenges …show more content…
"Criminal offenders are essentially hunter-gatherers; they forage for opportunities to commit crimes," said Brantingham. "The behaviors that a hunter-gatherer uses to choose a wildebeest versus a gazelle are the same calculations a criminal uses to choose a Honda versus a Lexus." What he means by this is based on the cost to benefit ratio, a criminal can determine whether or not it is worth it to commit the crime. The rate of burglaries tends to be higher for houses that have been burglarized before or are close neighbors of those that have been burglarized. This leads to the creation of burglary “hotspots.” Some research provides a mathematically rigorous way of connecting the geographical characteristics of a neighborhood (such as demographics, finances and ecology) to the patterns of burglary that would be seen in the …show more content…
Thus, when a house has been burglarized before, it increases the attractiveness value for the house and those nearby. Criminals move toward areas of high attractiveness values. If no additional burglaries occur in the vicinity, the attractiveness decreases. Mathematical modeling of crime in general, and burglaries in particular, is based on the “broken window effect” or repeat victimization sociological effect, which implies that houses in areas of past burglaries have a higher chance of being burglarized. Using two discrete models, one modeling the attractiveness of individual houses to burglars and the other modeling burglar movement, the authors of the UCLA study developed a continuum model based on a system of parabolic differential equations. Using this system as a starting point, the authors apply bifurcation theory, or the analysis of a system of ordinary differential equations under varying conditions, such as social or economic conditions of a neighborhood, to extend the scope of
When asking students what they think about math many will say that it’s boring, or that they will never use it in life. Math may seem very different from the unpredictable and highly relevant business of fighting crime, but in fact math is very relevant to determining the truth of what happened during a crime. The use of math is essential to many of the methods police use to solve crime, including dealing with fingerprints, computer and phone tracking, and eliminating possible suspects in a crime.
Police are faced with many challenges …show more content…
"Criminal offenders are essentially hunter-gatherers; they forage for opportunities to commit crimes," said Brantingham. "The behaviors that a hunter-gatherer uses to choose a wildebeest versus a gazelle are the same calculations a criminal uses to choose a Honda versus a Lexus." What he means by this is based on the cost to benefit ratio, a criminal can determine whether or not it is worth it to commit the crime. The rate of burglaries tends to be higher for houses that have been burglarized before or are close neighbors of those that have been burglarized. This leads to the creation of burglary “hotspots.” Some research provides a mathematically rigorous way of connecting the geographical characteristics of a neighborhood (such as demographics, finances and ecology) to the patterns of burglary that would be seen in the …show more content…
Thus, when a house has been burglarized before, it increases the attractiveness value for the house and those nearby. Criminals move toward areas of high attractiveness values. If no additional burglaries occur in the vicinity, the attractiveness decreases. Mathematical modeling of crime in general, and burglaries in particular, is based on the “broken window effect” or repeat victimization sociological effect, which implies that houses in areas of past burglaries have a higher chance of being burglarized. Using two discrete models, one modeling the attractiveness of individual houses to burglars and the other modeling burglar movement, the authors of the UCLA study developed a continuum model based on a system of parabolic differential equations. Using this system as a starting point, the authors apply bifurcation theory, or the analysis of a system of ordinary differential equations under varying conditions, such as social or economic conditions of a neighborhood, to extend the scope of