For this assignment, I used this Analyze Boston data set on shootings. The data begins in 2015 and continues to as recent as March 24th, 2023. This is obviously a very sensitive data set and topic, especially with recent nationwide events. It is my hope that data sets and analysis just like this can demonstrate that every one of these incidents are part of a larger, entirely preventable, epidemic. I intend to approach this delicate subject by treating the data as what it is: numerical evidence of someone's very real and harsh pain. Over-analyzing the data to the point of depersonalization should be avoided at all costs, in my opinion. It would remove the reason why the data should be analyzed at all: to find solutions rather than analyze for the sake of finding a story. I hope I did the former with my research.
My main finding is that despite being around 24 percent of the Boston population, Black people have been the victim of 78 percent of the shootings in Boston since 2015. Seventeen percent of those shootings were fatal.
The data, as I will show momentarily, makes it clear that Boston's Black population is most vulnerable to shootings. I challenge the city to reckon with this, and present viable solutions to protect Black people in Boston.
The chart to the right is a Pivot Table made on Microsoft Exel using the data. I organized it by ethnicity, and then created a filter to separate the fatal shootings from the non-fatal. Black people died in 82 percent of all fatal shootings since 2015. It's clear that Black people are the outlier in this data set. I created a chart from this data (below left) that puts that same data in a different visual format that more clearly shows the ethnic disparity.
The massive spike in the data is almost 250 lives that were taken by a weapon of mass destruction. To further my research, I would like to find more data on this that extrapolates the shooting by location. The closest thing this data set has is the District, but it is hard to determine location from district. I want to create a cloropleth map that details where these shootings happen. I believe that good can come out of these tragedies, and this data can be the roadmap to preventing any more shootings in the Boston area.
This data story is a Factoid story, although I hesitate to call the amount of Black people murdered by a gun in the last eight years a "factoid." It takes the one data point (78 percent) and extrapolates it into a larger story about gun violence in Boston and who is more protected from it and who isn't. I really do hope that this data makes a change in the way Boston manages shootings and protects its citizens.
Comments