Honors Projects

Author(s)

Owen MillerFollow

Abstract

Abstract: The following project utilized the correlation between economic indicators and crime rates to build tree-based machine learning algorithms that predict monthly crime rates in Ohio. The goal of the study was to answer how economic variables could be used in forecasting county level crime rates. A sample of 9 counties were utilized in building regression trees, random forests and evolutionary random forest models. The study concluded that lagged crime rates provided the best predictive ability in forecasting models, while economic variables provided more accuracy to property crime. The study could be furthered by creating models at the department level and expanding the amount of data utilized.

Department

Economics

Major

Economics – BS

First Advisor

Walt Ryley

First Advisor Department

Economics

Second Advisor

Adam Watkins

Second Advisor Department

Criminal Justice

Third Advisor

Krista Sturdevant

Third Advisor Department

Honors Program

Publication Date

Winter 12-9-2024

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