Statistics Question

A friend is getting ready to retire, and has been looking at where to end up. He had been thinking about Durango Colorado, but when he started checking things like crime rate, health care, quality of life, education, etc he found massive differences in the quoted statistics. Example, one source said highest crime rate in the state, another said below average for the state. Same for all the data types he looked at.

Does anyone here know of a reliable source for these kinds of statistics? Or where to find the raw data where you can roll your own.

Thanks.

reply to post by barkingdogamato


There is such a source for stats and I can't think for the life of me what it is; if I can find it, I'll check back.

reply to post by bluemirage5

Thanks

BDA

reply to post by barkingdogamato

As a long time Colorado resident I may be able to explain the discrepancies you noted.

First, more than 95% of the states population lives in one of the 10 eastern foothills population centers. This does not leave many people to populate the 100's of other small towns. Crime statistics come in two forms, crimes per X number of people and total crimes. The two different forms are interchangeable in the larger cities but far short for the smaller ones. For example, a town with 250 people and 10 auto thefts annually would have a theft rate of 4%, many times greater than the larger cities with 1000's of auto thefts each year. I think you get the picture.

I personally would look at the absolute crime rates and decide if you would like to read 10 front page stories a year on auto theft or a footnote of page 37 describing the 12 cars stolen yesterday.

Best regards,
Z