UPDATE (12/6/20): I have removed the original content in this post concerning the Data Search work for the crime data. You can now find that portion of the original post here.
In this series, I will be exploring the criminal activity in Washington DC over the past decade. I have explored the data in previous academic projects so I am familiar with the data. This will be a new project to capture updated code, methods, and results. The initial run through will be via R, then demonstrated in Julia and Python.
In this post we will exploring the planning and data search process of the current iteration.
Mapping out the Project
The following mind map was created in XMind to help define my project. I find this method to be helpful for giving me tasks to work towards. It allows me to brainstorm my questions, hypotheses, data source ideas, time parameters, and project objectives.
For this particular project I have mapped up a few different data sources that I would like to explore and analyze against the foundation of criminal activity data. In my search and collection of data, I may not be able to get everything I want. I also need to bound the data to a particular time frame to help scope the project. Should I find sufficient (or lack of) data to expand (or contract) the time parameters, I can go back and modify my project plan.
I do not have a strictly defined project objective, but will seek to answer as many questions that I have defined. Along the way, I will also document new questions and hypotheses.
Questions
My initial brainstorming of questions and objectives below, helped me to add data sources. Each question may have several sub-questions to help guide you to answer the higher-level question. Expand or modify your questions and hypotheses along the way.
If you have specific project questions, or a clients has defined your analysis project, this would be a good spot to fully define those parameters. Some questions have explicit and implicit tasks that should be understood because those may affect how you do your research and analysis.
Posts in Project Series
- Criminal Analysis: Planning
- Criminal Analysis: Data Search (part 0)
- Criminal Analysis: Data Search (part 1)
- Criminal Analysis: Data Search (part 2)
- Criminal Analysis: Data Search (part 3)
- Criminal Analysis: Data Storage
- Criminal Analysis: Data Storage (part 2)
- Criminal Analysis: Data Search (part 4)
- Derive a Star Schema By Example
- Criminal Analysis: Data Exploration
- Criminal Analysis: Data Exploration (part 1)
- Criminal Analysis: Data Exploration (part 2a)
- Criminal Analysis: Data Exploration (part 2b)
- Criminal Analysis: Data Storage (Part 3)
