Those who follow this blog for a while know that I am a big fan of the TV series Numb3rs, a series where a mathematician solves crime using mathematical models. Unfortunately, the TV show had ended in 2010.
What brings my attention today was a post on the Bayesian Heresy blog. Here I link the original:
In July the Santa Cruz Police Department began experimenting with an interesting bit of software developed by scientists at Santa Clara University. The researchers behind the software are like an intellectual “Oceans Eleven” team of specialists: two mathematicians, an anthropologist and a criminologist. They’ve combined their cerebral forces to come up with a mathematical model that takes crime data from the past to forecast crimes in the future. The basic math is similar to that used by seismologists to predict aftershocks following an earthquake (also a handy bit of software in southern California).
This is just amazing!! Totally Numb3rs! What is even better to see is that it seems the project is working:
Even more impressive, compared to July 2010 burglaries, the number of July 2011 burglaries are down 27 percent. Whether or not that trend holds remains to be seen, but so far it appears that being in the wrong place at the right time works.
Really cool, no?
For those who are interested on the math behind the Numb3rs episodes, I recommend this book and also this webpage!
I am truly looking forward to see "more real life Numb3rs" cases! Hope that in the future I can contribute for some.
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