1 reply to this topic

[Breanna Campbell]

I am in the process of completing an assignment on Crime in Canada,
in it I must include a cartogram. I used the violent crime severity index values that were supplied from Statistics Canada.

The crime severity index is:

The Crime Severity Index is calculated using Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2) data. The Police Reported Crime Severity Index (PRCSI) measures changes in the level of severity of crime in Canada from year to year.
In the index, all crimes are assigned a weight based on their seriousness. The level of seriousness is based on actual sentences handed down by the courts in all provinces and territories. More serious crimes are assigned higher weights, less serious offenses lower weights. As a result, more serious offenses have a greater impact on changes in the index. The Crime Severity Index for each province is calculated by dividing the sum of their weighted offenses by their population. The violent crime severity index includes all Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2) violent violations, some of which include uttering threats, criminal harassment and forcible confinement. For more information on how the Violent Crime Severity Index is Calculated go to:
http://www.ssc.ca/su...009_CBabyak.pdf

Is this a valid data type for a cartogram or MUST it be raw numbers like number of incidents of violent crime?

If anyone can clarify, that would be great!

[frax]

Why do you have to have a cartogram? I doubt any stats like this would be useful to present per province for Canada - since the population and demographics is so different between them. If it was absolute numbers (e.g. number of incidents) the map/cartogram would look very similar to a population cartogram (e.g. Ontario biggest, by far). Most Canadian provinces are also very heterogeneous (I was about to write inhomogeneous...) in population distribution. For presenting in a cartogram - Canadian provinces are also very different in size, which would make it weird.

But - to answer your question - yes you can present this index in a cartogram. From looking at the article you linked to - I think that bar chart in the article is a better way to communicate the index.