Thursday, September 17, 2020

Friday, September 18. 2020

Today's classes are: 

9:15 - 11:50 D Block Social and Environmental Sciences

12:30 - 3:05 A Block Criminology 

D Block Social and Environmental Sciences - Today, in room 115, you'll have the morning to work on your Towhee Creek Watershed map from your field work. You are representing data in a graphic format (encoding rather than decoding). 

Okay, first let’s get this out of the way right now. I’m a cartophile. I love maps. When I was a kid I immediately took the maps out of my parent’s National Geographic subscription when the magazine arrived in the mail. I used to love the Canadian Automobile Association flip maps that my parents would get for our many road trips south into the United States. I always had an atlas in my room. And I read books about maps. Look at letters 2-3-and-4 of the word Cartography…there must be a reason why I’d point that out...Paul Hardy from ESRI (a massively influential GIS company) wrote “Cartography has been defined as the art, science, technology, and craft of making maps and is a discipline going back 30,000 years to cave paintings locating woolly mammoths” 

Professor Michael Peterson from the University of Nebraska (Omaha) states that:

The purpose of a map is to show the world at a smaller scale so that we are able to get a sense of where things are located in relation to one another, and that we can have a better understanding of different patterns in geographical space. Maps are also valuable in that they are useful for gaining knowledge of patterns in geographic space and expanding our understanding of navigation. They are important to show trends in things as weather, population and growth. They are a visual source where spatial messages are transmitted from a cartographer to everyday people like you and me.

Maps don’t just help us get from place to place. They help us understand Earth and how its physical processes and features can shape human activity and vice versa. When data is organized by its locations, we can see geographic patterns that allow us to develop a better understanding of how systems work and interact with one another. But...

From City Lab’s “When Maps Lie” by Andrew Wiseman…

Maps are representations of the world where certain things are highlighted and certain things removed. This often is a good thing: if there’s a map for a specific purpose, it should only include things that are helpful (road types, names and cities on a road atlas, for example) or maybe for clarity’s sake you reduce how jagged or complicated something is, like the lines on a subway map. But it can be hard to tell when something has been manipulated or removed, so it’s important to think about the choices the cartographer could have made.

From National Geographic in an interview with Frank Jacobs…How to be a Critical Map Reader

“A map is always a bit of a lie because there is always something that is not on the map,” Jacobs says. “For instance, the typical map is flat while the world is round; there’s already one whole dimension that’s missing. When you read a map, you’re ingesting the point of view of the mapmaker. A map is not as blindly objective as a photograph; it’s an artifact that has been crafted to tell you a story”. The first step to becoming a critical map reader is to always question the intentions of the mapmaker.
The main question that you can ask with any map is, ‘Why?’ Why did someone make this? What’s the point? What’s the story and who is telling it?” Jacobs says. “Every map is an attempt to convince you of something; it’s like an argument. It’s in your best interest to know who is trying to convince you…Take any map that surprises you, that seems somehow ‘strange.’ Why does it stop you in your tracks? What is different about it? Can you relate why it attracts your attention to who made it, and to what purpose?” Jacobs says. “If cartography is the art of wrapping up a story in a map, then map reading is like a journey of discovery for that story.”

So maps are a Geographic media and all media has a bias. What you choose to put on a map shows your bias. Remember your purpose is to graphically depict scientific data (your observations) that will help answer the "big question" Is this creek healthy?

Ten Things to Consider When Making a Map

Elements of a Map

Principles of Cartographic Design

Use the following videos to help too...


A Block Criminology - To start this afternoon, I'd like you to choose 5 Violent, 5 Property and 5 Social crimes in Canada, from the lists below, and identify if you think they are increasing, decreasing or are steady (unchanging).

Violent violations include: homicide, attempted murder, sexual assault (levels 1-3), assault level 3 aggravated, assault level 2 weapon or bodily harm, assault level 1, assault peace officer, assaulting with a weapon or causing bodily harm to a peace officer, aggravated assault to a peace officer, robbery, criminal harassment, uttering threats, sexual violations against children, firearms (use of, discharge, pointing), forcible confinement or kidnapping, abduction, extortion, Indecent/Harassing communications, commodification of sexual activity,

Property violations include: B&E, theft of motor vehicle, theft over $5000, theft under $5000, mischief, possession of stolen property,  trafficking in stolen property, fraud, identity theft, identity fraud, arson, altering, removing or destroying vehicle identification number (VIN).

Social violations include: disturbing the peace, impaired driving, child pornography (possession, production and distribution), drug offences (possession, production and distribution), weapons (possession, production and distribution), prostitution (purchasing sexual services or communicating with the intention of buying sex)


We'll see what you think about crime trends and then we'll look at the BC Crime trends from 2009 - 2018 and then we'll talk about the disparity (difference) between the public perception of violent crime and the actual rates of violent crime in Canada....hint take a look to the left.

The crime data indicate that rates have declined significantly in the past few years and are now far less than they were a decade ago. Suspected causes for the crime rate drop include an increasing prison population, more police on the street, the end of the crack epidemic and the age structure of society. The data sources show relatively stable patterns in the crime rate. Ecological patterns show that crime varies by season and by urban versus rural environment, however there is evidence of gender patterns in the crime rate: Men commit more crime than women. Age is one of the largest influences on crime; young people commit more crime than the elderly (and there are fewer young people in society)
Crime data show that people commit less crime as they age, but the significance and cause of this pattern are still not completely understood. Similarly, racial and class patterns appear in the crime rate. However, it is still unclear whether these are true differences or a function of discriminatory law enforcement.

Although police-reported crime in Canada (measured by the Crime Severity Index CSI) increased for the fourth year in a row in 2018, the national CSI was 17% lower in 2018 than a decade earlier.  Of note....the police-reported crime rate and the CSI include only those incidents that come to the attention of police, either through reporting by the public or through pro-active policing. Results from the most recent General Social Survey on Victimization found that just under one-third (31%) of violent and non-violent incidents were reported to the police.

Since 1962, Statistics Canada has collected information on all criminal incidents reported by Canadian police services through its annual Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey. In addition to the UCR, Statistics Canada also collects information on victims of crime through the General Social Survey (GSS) on Canadians’ Safety (Victimization), which is conducted every five years. Unlike the UCR, the GSS on Victimization collects data on self-reported experiences with crime which include incidents that may or may not have been brought to the attention of the police. These complementary surveys are the primary sources of data on crime and victimization in Canada.

Highlights of the Stats Can Report show:

The change in the CSI in 2018 was the result of higher police-reported rates of numerous offences. Ordered by their relative impact on the CSI, these offences include fraud (+13%); level 1 sexual assault, meaning without a weapon or evidence of bodily harm (+15%); shoplifting of $5,000 or under (+14%); and theft over $5,000 (+15%). These increases were partially offset by decreases for some other offences, including lower rates of breaking and entering (-1%) and robbery (-3%)


Today I'll have you work on three questions about crime trends:
  1. Using pages 37 to 46 in the CRIM textbook outline and explain the crime patterns in relation to ecology, firearms, social class, age, gender and race.
  2. What is a chronic offender and what is the significance of Marvin Wolfgang's discovery (why is identifying the chronic offender important)?
  3. How would you explain the gender differences in the crime rate (why do you think males are more violent than females)? 

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