NEMC makes clear on every page that the results will include kids who went missing from a different state, but may now be in the state you queried. So you ought to go through all the records for each state to eliminate all the kids that went missing from somewhere else. In other words, Virginia's total should not include kids who went missing in California but may now be in VA, this does not add to the theory that kids are abducted from VA more than other states.
You need to clean up those numbers and re-make the chart with accurate figures.
You also need to figure out why/how NEMC can say there are 415 missing kids in VA, while the DOJ missing person statistics show only 211 people OF ALL AGES missing in VA. You need to account for this discrepancy.
From what I've gleaned thus far, as an IT pro, it appears the NCMEC is (possibly) purposely making the stats difficult to process. It is simply unfathomable that we don't have better tools online and publicly available - simple Google Maps overlays with extensible data, e.g. VA also appears to hide the DOB field (though indicates age in another). It is all so jumbled that it appears to an outside IT pro perspective to either be gross incompetence or purposeful obfuscation.
That said, to your point about the stats themselves - I see exactly what you do. But easily processing them again is ridiculously painstaking in the present form of the non-extensible data. I'm looking into culling the HTML & converting fields to something I can work with, XML e.g.
One final thought - the data anomalies you note would not necessarily - but probably be applicable to all the other states.
Yes, the out-of-state figures would apply to each state, but possibly VA would have more than others, proportionally. Impossible to say without going through all of them. And the same applies for the difference between DOJ and NEMC numbers, but I think it is still important to figure out why that discrepancy exists.
But even that fact, (the children listed in VA may have originated missing from another state), is again, either purposeful or incompetent obfuscation. When you search a state for the missing, you're assuming they're missing from that state. "Thought to be traveling to or in" a particular state should be a completely separate category within each state. And the missing link in the original state should have a link under each child that has that sub category to click on.
That's not rocket science to people whose goal it is to actually find and save missing children.
The big question to me is why the numbers are so hugely different from the NCIC's Missing Persons Database. NCMEC says Virginia has 415 missing kids; if we do a search for Virginia in the NCIC database, there are only 40-something missing people 16 and under, and those go back to 1957. Wtf?
Wow. Didn't know that. I guess our main question should be after John Walsh, and the national spotlight on missing kids, why would the databases be so terrible, at the least, and purposefully misleading at worst?
So if I limit the NCMEC search to kids missing up through the end of 2014, I get 73 for Virginia. That's .87 per 100k. Some others:
Through the end of 2014:
Virginia: .87 per 100k
Florida: .87
Michigan: .55
New York: .55
Texas: .63
So not nearly as wide a gap. So either there's been a huge rash of missing kids in the last two years, or VA is slower about updating their databases when they find kids or something. Or maybe quicker to notify NMCEC when one is reported missing?
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comeonpeople ago
NEMC makes clear on every page that the results will include kids who went missing from a different state, but may now be in the state you queried. So you ought to go through all the records for each state to eliminate all the kids that went missing from somewhere else. In other words, Virginia's total should not include kids who went missing in California but may now be in VA, this does not add to the theory that kids are abducted from VA more than other states.
You need to clean up those numbers and re-make the chart with accurate figures.
You also need to figure out why/how NEMC can say there are 415 missing kids in VA, while the DOJ missing person statistics show only 211 people OF ALL AGES missing in VA. You need to account for this discrepancy.
skjult ago
From what I've gleaned thus far, as an IT pro, it appears the NCMEC is (possibly) purposely making the stats difficult to process. It is simply unfathomable that we don't have better tools online and publicly available - simple Google Maps overlays with extensible data, e.g. VA also appears to hide the DOB field (though indicates age in another). It is all so jumbled that it appears to an outside IT pro perspective to either be gross incompetence or purposeful obfuscation.
That said, to your point about the stats themselves - I see exactly what you do. But easily processing them again is ridiculously painstaking in the present form of the non-extensible data. I'm looking into culling the HTML & converting fields to something I can work with, XML e.g.
One final thought - the data anomalies you note would not necessarily - but probably be applicable to all the other states.
comeonpeople ago
Yes, the out-of-state figures would apply to each state, but possibly VA would have more than others, proportionally. Impossible to say without going through all of them. And the same applies for the difference between DOJ and NEMC numbers, but I think it is still important to figure out why that discrepancy exists.
Why did you go with NEMC rather than DOJ data? Because DOJ doesn't limit it to children? Link in case you haven't already been there: https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/search
Freemasonsrus ago
But even that fact, (the children listed in VA may have originated missing from another state), is again, either purposeful or incompetent obfuscation. When you search a state for the missing, you're assuming they're missing from that state. "Thought to be traveling to or in" a particular state should be a completely separate category within each state. And the missing link in the original state should have a link under each child that has that sub category to click on. That's not rocket science to people whose goal it is to actually find and save missing children.
comeonpeople ago
True.
The big question to me is why the numbers are so hugely different from the NCIC's Missing Persons Database. NCMEC says Virginia has 415 missing kids; if we do a search for Virginia in the NCIC database, there are only 40-something missing people 16 and under, and those go back to 1957. Wtf?
Freemasonsrus ago
Wow. Didn't know that. I guess our main question should be after John Walsh, and the national spotlight on missing kids, why would the databases be so terrible, at the least, and purposefully misleading at worst?
comeonpeople ago
So if I limit the NCMEC search to kids missing up through the end of 2014, I get 73 for Virginia. That's .87 per 100k. Some others:
Through the end of 2014:
Virginia: .87 per 100k Florida: .87 Michigan: .55 New York: .55 Texas: .63
So not nearly as wide a gap. So either there's been a huge rash of missing kids in the last two years, or VA is slower about updating their databases when they find kids or something. Or maybe quicker to notify NMCEC when one is reported missing?
Freemasonsrus ago
Slower taking them off the list once found?