Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Gun Violence Statistics

There’s a lot of gun violence in the news. I’m not going to get into the politics of it, but it did make me take a look at how bad things really are. Here’s the hypothesis that we’ll test: Gun violence is worse than it’s ever been before.

First, a couple caveats. As a data scientist, I know first hand that data can be beaten into submission to “prove” any hypothesis you want. It takes extra work to really let the data speak for itself and possibly disprove your hunches. And on a related note, it’s difficult to find good data sources. Articles are not reliable because they’re generally very doctored to get their intended point across. The bigger, more reliable studies that publish raw data don’t publish data every year.

The most reliable numbers I could find were from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics Reports published in February 2016. Unfortunately the data in that report is from 2013, but it’s the most recent and trustworthy that I could find. That report states that in 2013, 11,208 of those were firearm homicides. That comes out to 3.5 people out of 100,000 or 0.0035% of the population. Other causes of death in the same range are aortic aneurysms, emphysema, multiple myeloma, stomach cancer and intestinal infections. Homicides by firearms accounted for 0.4% of the all deaths in 2013. By the way, do you want to know what the top three causes of death were?

  1. Heart disease: 23.5%
  2. Cancer: 22.5%
  3. Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 5.7%

My go-to comparison is always vehicle deaths. You’re 3.15 times more likely to die in a car accident than by a gun homicide. Do you worry 3.15 times more about the car accident than the gun homicide?

Those are all numbers from a single year. The original hypothesis was that we’re worse off than we were before so let’s look at some trend data. I spent a bunch of time doing searces in the http://wonder.cdc.gov system. It has data for 1999-2104. Here’s the summary I built for that data:

deathsbyyearregion

I had no idea that 45% of gun homicides were in the south! But back to the main point: those numbers don’t show much change. But hold on. They are slightly misleading because they are raw counts. The population grew significantly over that time range. We should be looking at the number of deaths per 100,000 people. That average has decreased:

gunhomicidesper100k

We’re not finding much data to support our hypothesis, but what about pre-1999? I couldn’t find data in that CDC system pre-1999, but I did find this chart showing that we had a peak in the 90s that was much worse than today. This data comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics via Wikipedia. Note that these numbers are a bit lower than the CDC numbers for the overlapping years. The CDC has their gun homicide deaths broken down into a number of categories (rifles, shotguns, pistols, terrorism, etc) and I’m guessing the Bureau of Justice Statistics has a slightly different categorization. However, I think it’s still valuable to look at the data:

Ushomicidesbyweapon

I lived through that huge spike of gun homicides and had no idea that it existed.

I learned that you have to be really careful when comparing numbers because “gun deaths” can mean a lot of things. Some sites will include suicide by guns in their numbers. Suicide with guns are roughly twice as common as homicides with guns so they really change the numbers. Other articles will do their ratios and percentages based on people under 25. A large majority of the gun violence happens to and by people under 25. Some sites even include war related deaths in their gun numbers. And as you saw above, even reporting the raw totals can be used to trick people if you’re intentionally leaving out the fact that the population changed over that time range.

Do we have a problem? Yep. Would it be a horrifying event to witness? Yep. Should we analyze the data and run experiments to see how we could improve the problem? Yep. Is it worse than used to be? Nope.

P.S. Will any of this data stop people from yelling at other on TV? Nope.

Sync 3 With Windows Phone

sync3As I researched the possibility of ordering a new truck last year, I thought I’d save some money by skipping the Sync system. We have it on the Escape and, while it’s functional, it’s not WOW and for the extra cost, it should be at least 72% more wow. Then I heard that the 2016 F150s would be receiving the brand new Sync 3 system. It’s a complete overhaul and a break from the Microsoft system. The early reviews were very good so I went for it. So far, I’m glad I did. My main beef with Sync 2 is that it’s sluggish. Sync 3 is very responsive. I can pinch to zoom and get much faster reactions to touch selections.

Using either Sync system with Windows Phone is a bit underwhelming. You get Bluetooth connectivity and it will do things like show the name of the song you’re playing, but it won’t display your text messages on the screen, run connected apps or anything fancy like that.

In the new truck, I was having trouble getting Cortana to speak to me or hear me when connected to Sync 3 via Bluetooth. I finally found a checkbox in the advanced Bluetooth settings on my Nokia 929 that says “Use an alternate Bluetooth audio connection for Speech”. I don’t know what that means but after I checked it, Cortana would break in and read my text message and let me reply. Perfect!

Three Year Old Photos

Tyla had some great ideas for photos of Elijah at three years old. She picked out outfits, bought a prop and corralled Elijah and me for photo time. Here are a couple of the better results. Thanks for all your hard work, Tyla!

elijah3_1 elijah3_2

Hand Hold

handholdThe door to our garage has a spring in the hinge so it closes automatically. That’s generally handy but I’m waiting for it to smash Elijah’s hand. He has to hold onto the door frame to step down. So to help keep all his fingers attached, I pulled out some scrap wood and built a little hand hold for him. It was a one night project using an old broom stick as the round piece to grip and so far it’s working out really well.

New Truck

The truck is here! I got a call Saturday morning saying it had just arrived on the train at the depot in Kent. They put a rush on it and I got to pick it up on Sunday afternon. Kudos to Evergreen Ford in Issaquah for helping me do a bunch of the paperwork by phone and email on Saturday so that Sunday went faster. That was really appreciated since we had Elijah in tow.

The final deal went very well. When you order, you get the rebates and factory incentives at the time of the delivery. That equated to $4200 in extra savings that I hadn’t planned on! They gave me a fair deal for the Subaru and incorporated a change to our previous agreement because Uncle Mark was able to let me use his A-plan family pricing deal. Ford temporarily extended it to nieces and nephews. Yay!

I got out without paying any extra money except I did add mud flaps and the spray in bedliner. Both were planned purchases at some point in the next month so I just tacked them on there. It’s in the shop today getting those things done.

I’ve only had it for a couple days so I can’t give a full review, but I have no buyers remorse. The Sync 3 system is a great improvement over Sync 2 and it will get even better once we switch to Android phones this winter. The truck drives nicely and the big backup camera view is a help trying to maneuver this beast into parking spots. But enough jibber jabber, how about some photos?

f150_1f150_2 f150_3

 

Mallets

After a couple failed projects, I was looking for a quick win and decided to make some wooden mallets. They’re handy for assembly wood parts. The big wood face is gentler on your project than a standard hammer. There are a lot of different ways to approach the project, but I chose to use Jay Bates’s laminated method.

First I had to choose some wood. When we got married, Tyla already had an old, beat up oak dining table. She always dreamed of refinishing it, but last summer we agreed it was better to just get rid of it instead of continuing to store it. I salvaged quite a bit of wood from it. It has just been sitting in the side of the garage and I decided to make use of it. I grabbed one leaf and rain it through the planer to get all the old finish off of it. It cleaned up nicely.

After that the rest was pretty simple. The head is built from three layers of wood with the middle layer being chopped in half to make a hole for the handle. The handle is tapered so it slides into the hole and sticks there. When finished, the handle can be detached from the mallet by just pounding it through. There’s not much too it but I think it will come in handy.

I made two thinking that I’d probably screw one up, but both came out reasonably nice so I gave one to Tim since we were heading to his house for dinner that night.

woodmallets

Truck Downsides

f150builtfordtoughTired of hearing about the upcoming truck delivery? Too bad! Ha! I think about it a LOT so that’s what ends up coming out of my mouth and my fingers. Most of my thoughts are excitement and anticipation (current estimated delivery date is 6/28), but I’ve also been taking time to enjoy my Subaru. Here are some things I’ll miss about it:

  • It’s so inexpensive and reliable! I only paid about $17K for it brand new and other than oil changes and standard service, I’ve only put about $4-5K into it. The cost per mile was phenomenally low.
  • It’s a manual and I really enjoy driving manual transmissions. I drove an automatic for a couple years after getting my license but then I started a run of manuals: 1991 Ford Probe, 2002 Ford Mustang GT and this 2006 Subaru Impreza. That adds up to about 16 or 17 years of driving a stick.
  • I’m pretty sure that the Subaru will be a lot better in the slippery conditions than the truck will be.
  • The small size is very convenient for parking and driving in traffic. I’m sure that there will be plenty of annoying times trying to find a parking spot for the huge truck.
  • Oddly enough, some types of wood purchases will be more difficult with the truck. For example, I can fit 20-30 8 foot 2x4s in the Subaru with the hatch and the windows closed. That means I can get wood even if it’s raining. With the truck those will have to go in the bed and they’ll hang out over the tailgate. Obviously there are plenty of other hauling situations which are way easier with a truck, but the Subie was no slouch.

And I guess the final one isn’t specific to the Subaru and the truck, but it’s kind of relaxing to drive a car that’s already dinged up. Those first few scratches in a new vehicle can be extra annoying.

So yes, I’m going to be thrilled when I swap keys for the truck, but this Subaru has been an excellent vehicle for me.

Follow On Facebook

facebook-wordpressFacebook is a monster. They have over a billion and a half unique users who visit every month. That’s a staggering number. So the odds are that many of you are on Facebook and some of you might even preferred to get notified about new posts via Facebook.

I recently added a WordPress plugin that automatically publishes a news story in Facebook for every post that I make here. They all end up on the old, but rarely used, Studio711 Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/studio711.com

If you Like that page, you should start seeing some of the posts show up in your newsfeed. Due to Facebook’s algorithms, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll see all of them, but you’ll, of course, always be able to find the full list once you come to this site.

I will take no offense if nobody follows that Facebook page, but I thought I’d throw it out there in case it’s useful for you.

 

Beer Festival

WP_20160618_001This past weekend was the annual beer festival at Marymoor. Last year I went with Don and Logan. This year Don was out of town, but Logan went again and Luke and Tim came too. It was a pretty wet day but somehow it didn’t rain while we were there.

There were 111 breweries there and most breweries had four or five different beers on tap. You get a 5 oz glass and 10 tokens. I definitely didn’t hit a home run with every beer, but it’s a fun way to try beers that you might not normally buy.

A huge thanks to the ladies for watching the kids while we enjoyed ourselves. I love this event!

Dozer Days

On a very hot day a couple weeks ago, we took Elijah down to the Puyallup fair grounds for Dozer Days. It’s a charity fundraiser event that gives kids the chance to drive and operate big construction equipment. We didn’t really know what to expect when we headed down there, but it was an excellent event! The whole day was very well organized. Each machine had it’s own area to operate in with dirt to dig, etc. In addition to the operator in the machine, there was a helper moving kids between the line and the machine. They organized the lines in such a way that you never had to wait too long for a turn. Everyone working there was a volunteer and they were great with the kids.

If you’ve ever seen Elijah around construction equipment, it’s no surprise to you have that he LOVED it. We let him pick out any of the equipment and he always chose the smaller machines. That was fine with us since those lines were generally shorter. He got quite a few turns and we also spent some time walking around the static displays.

I don’t know that this is something we need to do every year, but I’m sure we’ll go back at some point. Why don’t they have this for adults?!

dozerdays1 dozerdays2 dozerdays3