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Andy Wheeler

@crimede-coder.bsky.social

120 followers 59 following 100 posts

Data scientist, with background in criminal justice. Consulting website at https://crimede-coder.com/ Personal blog at https://andrewpwheeler.com/

crimede-coder.com

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Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Jan 16

Giving BlueSky a try, appreciate the follow.

Mostly technical stats and programming content, with a focus on issues in criminal justice.

Chart of weekly motor vehicle thefts in Dallas, with standard errors (Z-scores)

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Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · 12d

Given that NIJ stopped funding additional development of Crime Solutions, I scraped the website and archived the reviews in a permanent location using ardrive.

andrewpwheeler.com/2025/09/26/i...

I scraped the Crime solutions site

Before I get to the main gist, I am going to talk about another site. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) paid RTI over $10 million dollars to develop a forensic technology center of excellence…

andrewpwheeler.com

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Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · 23d

www.crimrxiv.com/pub/lciht0xi...

And I would have got away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids": Experimentally falsifying Ghost Criminology, by Ian Adams

Crimversations:

www.crimrxiv.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Sep 8

It is soft-launched, but my python package `crimepy` is intended to contain most of the work in my career. github.com/apwheele/cri...

Aoristic analysis of commercial burglaries

Time series analysis of outliers using Poisson z-score and seasonal charts.

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Sep 2

Book review on the Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation.

Had no idea Bell had its hand in so many of the building blocks of modern computing. It is also interesting how science + engineering can come together to build great things.

andrewpwheeler.com/2025/09/02/r...

Recommend reading The Idea Factory, Docker python tips

A friend recently recommended The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner. It is one of the best books I have read in awhile, so also want to recommend to th…

andrewpwheeler.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 29

Wrong link, here is the correct one to the sworn dashboard, crimede-coder.com/graphs/sworn

Sworn Dashboard

Sworn Officer Rates over Time

crimede-coder.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 29

Can check out individual cities at crimede-coder.com

CRIME De-Coder

Crime Analysis Consulting | Process Automation | Computer Coding

crimede-coder.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 29

I have updated my Sworn Dashboard, according to the FBI, the percent of female sworn has gone down in 2024 after consistent rises over the last 8 years.

This is mostly due to composition though, more agencies are reporting in the FBI database than in prior years.

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 28

Deep Research tools cite open access work much more often in my experiments than closed source materials. I go over a few examples for Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity in this blog post.

andrewpwheeler.com/2025/08/28/d...

CJ folks should be posting pre/post prints to plain text HTML (like CrimRXiv)

Paragraph discussing peer review vs other materials cited in Gemini report

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 26

The local newspaper did a writeup of this in Raleigh -- Cisco does a round of layoffs every year (I guess for quarterly reporting to make expenses look lower). There are people who go on the merry go round and like it (they get several months of severance and then get hired back). Free vacation.

Erin Fogg says Free Link @criminalerin.bsky.social · Aug 26

Oh that's fine, Cisco isn't important, hardly anything relies on its technology working correctly at all times without fail cuz only a very small percentage of 85% of the whole internet runs on its systems, it's literally fine, stop panicking and go learn to code

Software engineers among hardest hit in latest Cisco layoffs

More than 200 Cisco workers across the San Francisco Bay area will be cut

www.itpro.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 26

See this blog post, showing this tip plus using the pickle module with more complicated classes (and updating their methods)

andrewpwheeler.com/2025/08/26/r...

Reloading classes in python and shared borders

For some housekeeping, if you are not signed up, also make sure to sign up for the RSS feed of my crime de-coder blog. I have not been cross posting here consistently. For the last few posts: Using…

andrewpwheeler.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 26

Pro python tip, I like to develop in the REPL. That way I can use the reload library to edit functions. E.g.

from src import myfunc
test = myfunc(...) # errors out

Then can do

from importlib import reload
reload(myfunc) # edit the source before this
test = myfunc(...) # works

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 24

New blog post, using the SPPT to monitor changes in crime patterns. crimede-coder.com/blogposts/20...

Many of the other techniques (ESRI's emerging hotspots, or KDE maps) tend to be too noisy. This controls for multiple comparisons.

Using the SPPT to Monitor Changes in Crime

Using the Spatial Point Pattern Test to Monitor Changes in Crime

crimede-coder.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 23

San Diego sheriff's office is advertising a *work from home* dispatcher position www.linkedin.com/posts/activi...

LinkedIn post on work from home for dispatcher in San Diego

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 22

For folks interested in learning python, grab an epub copy of my Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python, crimede-coder.com/cdcstore/pro....

I made a limited time coupon -- use Ebook20 which lowers the price of the epub to $19.99. Good for the next week.

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 20

And Check out my bookshelf 'New Fantasy' on Bibliome: bibliome.club/shelf/3vnfsg8j

New Fantasy - Bibliome

Newer works in fantasy/sci-fi

bibliome.club

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 20

Also have Check out my bookshelf 'Tech' on Bibliome: bibliome.club/shelf/jn1tenjf

Tech - Bibliome

Non-fiction books broadly related to technology. May be popular discussion books or actual "how to code".

bibliome.club

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 20

Check out my bookshelf 'Stats & Operations Research' on Bibliome: bibliome.club/shelf/p69ekhpw (via @andreasthinks.me )

Stats & Operations Research - Bibliome

Non-fiction books broadly related to statistical topics and operations research

bibliome.club

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Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 20

Recently found James Tuttle's substack on macro crime trends in the US. It is an excellent follow crimeforecast.substack.com/p/the-smartp...

The Smartphone-Induced Teen Crime Decline

Gen Z made crime rates 'crash out'

crimeforecast.substack.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 16

Using Chicago open data for some example graphs, here is the time series trends for street robberies. Basically as low as it has been going back to 2015

Street robbery time series trends in Chicago.

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 9

Work supported by the Council on Criminal Justice. counciloncj.org/toward-a-bet...

Toward a Better Estimate of Domestic Violence in America - Council on Criminal Justice

Using new methodology that accounts for the underreporting of domestic violence to law enforcement, this analysis estimates that incidents in a sample of 20 large cities are 29% to 53% higher than wha...

counciloncj.org

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 9

Often folks look at large macro patterns of NCVS vs NIBRS. You can use both together to get a more accurate estimate of the total amount of crime in your jurisdiction. This is focused on domestic violence, but can be expanded to any inter-personal crime type.

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 9

The methodology is simple. Imagine you have 100 reported crimes, but only a 50% reporting rate. Your estimate of the total number of crimes (the dark figure) is 100/0.5 = 2. I expand this slightly to estimate different reporting rates for different demographics and over time.

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 9

My peer reviewed paper on up-adjusted NIBRS crime estimates based on domestic violence victimization reporting rates (with Alex Piquero) is now out in Crime & Delinquency.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Aug 4

Reminded of this old blog post in a thread on X, if you want to know how to fit a plateau in a regression model, this shows one way to constrain the coefficients and fit the model in scipy.

andrewpwheeler.com/2022/05/02/f...

Fitting a plateau effects model in scipy

Dealing with a few models recently that people fit non-linear effects (either via polynomials or splines), and the results are just on their face too curvy. There is also a common social science tr…

andrewpwheeler.com

Andy Wheeler @crimede-coder.bsky.social · Jul 30

Schmid also has a book on creating graphics by hand. Incredibly hard work and display of craftmanship.