Analyze This: Crime Data in Wolfram|Alpha

New curated data flows into Wolfram|Alpha every day. One addition that we haven’t highlighted before is crime data from the U.S. Department of Justice Statistics, including historical information on crimes and crime rates for all 50 states and thousands of individual cities.

A simple query for “U.S. Crime” will return the nation’s overall crime rate (the number of crimes per 100,000 people) and details on individual categories of violent and property crimes.

But Wolfram|Alpha’s true strength shows when you perform more-advanced comparisons and computations. For example, try comparing the crime statistics for two cities, such as “Crime Seattle vs. New York”; you can see clearly that although crime rates have fallen gradually over the last fifteen years, Seattle’s crime rate has maintained a level around 2.5 times that of New York City.

You can also compare raw numbers of specific crimes—for example, statistics for “U.S stolen cars vs. burglaries”.

And again, Wolfram|Alpha shines when you compare crime statistics with data from entirely different domains. Curious about the correlation between crime and trends in housing, employment, or other socioeconomic areas? Just ask:

This post highlights just a few examples of how this data can be explored in Wolfram|Alpha. We are continually looking to identify authoritative data sources to expand the breadth and depth of socioeconomic coverage in Wolfram|Alpha. One of the ways we do this is by reaching out to experts and data curators from around the globe. If you are interested in helping us develop this data, please consider joining our network of experts or becoming a volunteer curator.