Publications by Diego Valle-Jones
Mexico’s Economy
Yesterday the INEGI released the GDP figures for 2009, and since it was an annus horribilis for Mexico, I thought I’d put up a couple of charts. Looking through the Banco de Información Económica I found two series of historical seasonally adjusted GDP data available: GDP in 1993 pesos going from 1980 to 2007 GDP in 2003 pesos go...
1664 sym 6 img
Weird dietary habits in the US
Using this database of food consumption data the blog Canibais e Reis kindly put together, I calculated all values for which the US was at least 2 standard deviations from the world average. Here are the outliers in standard deviations from the world mean: Poultry.Meat..kcal.day…2003 2.5 Soybean.Oil..kcal.day…2003 4.5 Sug...
1208 sym 4 img 1 tbl
Cluster analysis of what the world eats
Keeping with the theme of the post below, I used a clustering algorithm to group the different countries according to what they eat. I simply played around with the number of clusters until I got something I thought resembled reality, so don’t interpret this as an in-depth analysis. Group 1: Lot’s of coffee and offal. They don’t...
1481 sym 2 img
Statistical Analysis and Visualization of the Drug War in Mexico
On December 11, 2006 Felipe Calderon, as the first significant act of his presidency, sent the army to his home state of Michoacan. He claimed that it was to regain control of territories lost to the drug cartels, and indeed, a new cartel had started operating in Michocan. But the fact that he won the election by the slim margin of ...
40525 sym 72 img 30 tbl
The police records for 2009 are out.
The 2009 homicide numbers collected by the SNSP (National System of Public Security) are finally out, you can download the data from the ICESI, which is a civic institution not affiliated with the government. If you remember, one of the conclusions from my statistical analysis of the drug war was that: The police records in 2008 are...
2246 sym 2 img
The most violent municipalities in Mexico (2008)
The top six most violent municipalities are near the US border. Ciudad Juárez is in a class by itself with 113 homicides per 100,000 people. José Azueta is the municipality where Zihuatanejo is located. Mazátlan, another popular tourist destination, also appears on the list. Lázaro Cárdenas is the largest seaport in Mexico and ever since t...
1134 sym 2 img
Homicide in North America
I’m surprised by how similar the trends are (excluding the drug war in Mexico). There were big decreases in the homicide rate in all three countries starting in the early nineties, which then slowed down around 2000. The homicide rates for Mexicans and Hispanics in the US are very similar, this is not surprising given that 2/3 of Hispanics a...
1236 sym 6 img
Mystery solved: The discrepancy in homicide data
I’ve been complaining about how homicide statistics from police sources were too low in 2009, with the entire state of Chihuahua having less homicides than its biggest city. I was thinking of finding out if I could use the IFAI (Freedom of Information Access) to obtain the original CIEISP forms which the state police forces are ...
4609 sym 8 img 1 tbl
Hacking the CISEN homicide data
The director of the CISEN, the Mexican agency in charge of generating intelligence to safeguard Mexico’s security, said in a presentation yesterday that the number of homicides linked to the drug war was a little over 28,000 since the start of the Calderon administration. Guillermo Valdés didn’t provide the raw data so I used E...
2996 sym 6 img
Myths about Ciudad Juarez
Last year there were over 2,600 murders in Ciudad Juarez, and if the more than 1,800 murders so far this year are any indications, there will be even more murders in 2010. Ciudad Juarez is a scary place, but it wasn’t always that way… I learned from Noel Maurer’s Blog that Ciudad Juarez used to have a low murder rate before 199...
6730 sym 20 img