Confusing Use of Statistics

Earlier this evening I was flipping channels and stopped at one of the local news stations. It was doing a story about the impact of the 150,000 Katrina evacuees who are still living in Houston. (For the purposes of the story, they were talking only about what falls within the Houston city limits, not the "greater Houston area".)

Here's what bothered me: the story mentioned that, in the past year, if you don't take into account Katrina evacuees, the crime rate in Houston "rose by 7%". However, if you do take into account Katrina evacuees, then "that number rises by 25%". I can't remember exactly how the woman worded everything, but she ended up doing so in a way that made it impossible to figure out what the hell she was saying. What number rose by 25%? The number or crimes? Because that's a lot of crime. But because of they way she structured her sentences, she was actually saying that 7% got 25% higher, which is an increase of less than 2%. That's not very much. And if she was actually saying that the non-evacuee crime hike is a 7% increase, and that the with-evacuee increase was higher, did the percentage increase by 25% (for a total increase of 32%) or to 25%???

Normally I would just mention the fact that this was the local Fox news affiliate, and bitch about Fox news. But I would acually like to know what the hell they were talking about. It only took about a second on the internet for me to confirm my suspicions: that the increase in crime rates are definately not less than 2%. One story from a Lafeyette news station's website even said that, since the hurricane and the evacuation, Katrina evacuees have been either the victims or the suspects in 20% of the murders that took place in Houston - more than double their percenatage of the population.

The amount of first-hand, accurate information that I know about Louisiana is negligible. I'm not even going to post what I think, except to say this: I think that, if anything, the post-Katrina events have made it a little more clear that extreme poverty and excessive wealth, and the huge gap in between, are huge problems in this country. Take from that what you will. It's too late at night/ early in the morning.