Real-Life Math
As a crime prevention specialist, you are expected to work with
people who need to learn how to better protect themselves. Perhaps you would
be working with kids who need examples of how to live a crime-free life or
examples of ways to change their lives if they started on the wrong path.
What
you didn't expect was all the time you would spend in the office, working
on the paperwork and details of the job. It's all part of the job. In
order to make a difference in people's lives, there is paperwork that
needs to be done to record the actions that work and don't work.
Take
the case you're working on today. A local business would like to expand
by opening another pub in a nearby neighborhood. Their current pub is very
successful, and very much respected by its patrons.
However, the neighborhood
where the owner would like to open the second store isn't
quite as upscale. Crime rates are higher, and since the pub serves alcohol,
there are several crime risks involved. Robberies will be more likely to take
place. More fights will be prone to break out.
To determine whether
the risk is worth the effort, the business owner has asked for your feedback
on opening the new pub in this location. You're trying to determine how
many patrons the pub can serve at one time before the crime risk becomes so
high it's unacceptable.
To figure out the ratio of crimes committed
to the number of people who might be in the bar, you've had to pull reports
from other bars, restaurants and pubs in the area. You'll have to gather
all the numbers and then average the number of crimes committed versus the
number of people at the establishment at that time.
In each of the
reports, there are averages for the number of patrons per night and the number
of crimes permitted. The figures were established by averaging the numbers
of both for a full year.
After going through all the reports, here
are the numbers that you've gathered:
| Number of patrons per night | Number of crimes committed |
| 327 | 3 |
| 279 | 4 |
| 403 | 8 |
| 355 | 5 |
| 356 | 9 |
| 272 | 2 |
| 389 | 4 |
| 177 | 2 |
| 243 | 3 |
| 265 | 4 |
Now all you have to do is determine the average number of crimes
committed versus the average number of occupants that might come into a pub
on any given night.
"We often use math to solve numbers, as much of
our work relies on demographics," says Barry Davidson. He is a crime prevention
specialist. "In one study, an equation was developed to figure out the maximum
number of occupants that should be allowed in a local pub before crime would
rise."