LunarCrime

Overview

• Work collectively to find if a full moon impacts crime rate.
  • In this project, we analyze 2016 crime rates in three major US cities - Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia as they relate to a full moon. We consider various types of crime while observing the cycles of the moon attempting to find a correlation between the lunar cycle and crime rate.
  • Hypothesis: On days where full moons occur, the crime rates are greater.

Analysis Process

• For the year 2016, we analyzed each month individually to find the below information:

  • The day the full moon took place in that month

  

  • Total number of crimes reported
  • Average number of crimes per day
  • The day with the highest crime rate
  • The day with the lowest crime rate
  • Total crime committed on the day with the full moon
  • Percentage of monthly crime committed on the day with a full moon
  • The rank of the crime committed on the day with the full moon in relation to the crime committed on the rest of the month
  • Bargraph revealing monthly total and line for number of crimes that occured on the full moon

Data for Boston (Data for Philadelphia and Baltimore contained within)

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

Spetember

October

November

December

Overall for the year

Day of Full Moon, Max Day, Min Day

Percentage of Crime on days with a full moon compared to all other days fo crime

Conclusions

• Given our analysis, we reject our hypothesis. Crime rates were not impacted by a full moon.
• Out of the 36 months we looked at there was only one month where the most crime occurred on the full moon. (March in Philadelphia)
• For all three cities, the annual crime committed on nights with a full moon (12 days) was 3.3%.
  • For all three cities, the average crime committed per 12 days was 3.3%.
• We noticed a pattern in weekly activities, alomst like a sin wave. Showing that day of the week has an impact on crime rates.