The restorative force that fights evil

[Mike]

I have a problem that I hope someone might be able to help me with. Several years ago I believed I had discovered an amazing pattern with profound, theological implications. However my pattern isn't in scripture, it's in crime statistics.

I'll just spill it, I guess. If you draw a graph of the total number of crimes committed per year in the U.S., starting in 1935, the year the FBI started collecting the data, you will see a shape that I think is a complex waveform. If I'm right, it means harmonic motion is happening. This would, in turn, have some very silly sounding implications, such as the existence of a restorative force that fights evil.

I really don't want to go around telling people there is a restorative force that fights evil if my belief in it is just the result of cognitive bias. I don't think it is, but I wouldn't know, would I? And this is some undeniably crazy sounding stuff - I actually have myself thinking that when Jesus said 'turn the other cheek,' he was thinking about phase cancellation. Oh, and I'm pretty sure there's a fundamental frequency of evil.

I know how funny that sounds, and yet I believe it all, based on data that a zillion people have looked at before me. The odds of cognitive bias being responsible must be very high. On the other hand, I know what a $%&*#@% complex waveform looks like.

So here's where you come in. I'd like you to take a look at a small post I put up. You'll breeze right through it ten minutes, tops. It's really just a bunch of pictures of this one graph, with which I try to show that the whole thing is a long series of patterns, and patterns of patterns, one flowing right into the other, which repeat, or flip over or show some other symmetry. And they all add together to form a big sine wave.

I don't expect that your some sort of expert on complex waveforms - you may not even know what one is. I'd still be interested in your opinion.

http://michaelneuman.org/harmonic-motion-in-u-s-crime-rates/

Naturally, if anyone looks it over I'd love to know what you think. Thanks

Mick

[Richard Amiel McGough]

I have a problem that I hope someone might be able to help me with. Several years ago I believed I had discovered an amazing pattern with profound, theological implications. However my pattern isn't in scripture, it's in crime statistics.

I'll just spill it, I guess. If you draw a graph of the total number of crimes committed per year in the U.S., starting in 1935, the year the FBI started collecting the data, you will see a shape that I think is a complex waveform. If I'm right, it means harmonic motion is happening. This would, in turn, have some very silly sounding implications, such as the existence of a restorative force that fights evil.

I really don't want to go around telling people there is a restorative force that fights evil if my belief in it is just the result of cognitive bias. I don't think it is, but I wouldn't know, would I? And this is some undeniably crazy sounding stuff - I actually have myself thinking that when Jesus said 'turn the other cheek,' he was thinking about phase cancellation. Oh, and I'm pretty sure there's a fundamental frequency of evil.

I know how funny that sounds, and yet I believe it all, based on data that a zillion people have looked at before me. The odds of cognitive bias being responsible must be very high. On the other hand, I know what a $%&*#@% complex waveform looks like.

So here's where you come in. I'd like you to take a look at a small post I put up. You'll breeze right through it ten minutes, tops. It's really just a bunch of pictures of this one graph, with which I try to show that the whole thing is a long series of patterns, and patterns of patterns, one flowing right into the other, which repeat, or flip over or show some other symmetry. And they all add together to form a big sine wave.

I don't expect that your some sort of expert on complex waveforms - you may not even know what one is. I'd still be interested in your opinion.

http://michaelneuman.org/harmonic-motion-in-u-s-crime-rates/

Naturally, if anyone looks it over I'd love to know what you think. Thanks

Mick
Hey there Mick,

Glad you found your way back.

I'm sure you are not surprised to hear that I don't see any reason to think that the data follows a sin curve. It doesn't even go through a single cycle! It's just a graph with a bump. It could fit a thousand different equations.

Are you familiar with the page called Spurious Correlations (http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)? It's hilarious. It shows lots of graphs with correlations between things that are obviously nothing meaningless coincidences. Here's a typical example, which also happens to look a lot like the graph of crime statistics on your site:

1720



I'm sure you could fit that data to a sin wave.

And here's a graph that shows a correlation involving and extremely complex wave pattern:

1721

Again, it's obviously meaningless. So can you explain why your data should be taken as evidence of anything?

Good to be chatting again,

Richard