Search for Statistics on the Malaysia Airlines Plane Crash Mystery

Looking for background statistics to research the Malaysia Airlines disappearance and apparent plane crash?

Check out our search engine for statistics, or take a look at these links for more information:

IRchartnexus is an investment firm that has a financial background on Malaysia Airlines with links to Malaysia Airlines reports.

Flightstats.com can give you a background on flight records for Malaysia Airlines.

The Department of Civil Aviation Air Transport Division of Malaysia may have useful information buried somewhere in its website. (The investigative link wasn't active when I went to the website, and only one statistic report was available, which required a translation.)  But you can also search the Aviation Safety Network for statistics, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), or International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).  Comparing countries? The European Aviation Safety Agency or Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) may be of some help. Wikipedia has an entry on Aviation Accidents that contains a list of aviation organizations, associations and authorities that could be of value to you

The Department of Statistics Malaysia has an Offical Portal for statistics on the social demographics, business and economy of Malaysia.

(Photo Credit: Simon_Sees. Creative Commons License 2.0.)

BBC News and CNN continue news coverage of the (apparent) plane crash mystery, and you should stay updated with Interpol reports and findings.

Digital Globe is the company behind the impressive crowd sourcing initiative taking place to help scour an unfathomable amount of imagery shots for debris or other clues using Tomnod. You can find facts on ocean debris at the U.S. EPA website, statistics on ocean litter can be found in the National Marine Debris littering pdf file, and also at the Keep Australia Beautiful link on marine litter statistics.

Reddit users are weighing in heavily on the plane's disappearance and keeping other users updated with timelines and reliable news sources.

Statistics to the Boeing aircraft 777-220ER can be found on Boeing's technical characteristics page, Airliners.net Boeing 777-200 information page, and in a pdf file from the FAA website (with plenty of mathematical explanations for you statistical wizards).

You can find links for plane crash statistics in my old (lengthy, disorganized, but helpful) blog post on Plane Crash Statistics, and a few more in my post on the Buffalo (Clarence) New York freak plane crash.

The links to government and aviation statistic websites are included in the custom search engine on my page, so if you're looking for a specific fact, try the search engine for statistics at the top of this blog.

If you know of any other links that would be useful to others researching this plane's disappearance, feel free to provide them in the comments below.

Our hearts go out to all of the families and friends of those on board Malaysia Airline flight 370. Special condolences to Mei Ling Chng's family, friends and co-workers. My son and his family live in Pittsburgh, and Eastman Chemical supports our nearby town of Kingsport. For the sake of the families involved, we hope this mystery will soon be solved. Peace to all.

Teacher Quality Statistics

"Teacher Quality" reports and statistics I find relate teacher quality to student test scores. (Heck, hand kids the answers and you'll be a brilliant teacher.) That gives these so called "Teacher Quality" reports a failing grade in my eyes - with or without the numerous "value-added" qualities incorporated into the results. And guess why NY went from a "D" to a "C" in the latest Teacher Quality reports? Because they tied teacher/student testing more closely together.

We've lost education inside of institutionalism. Using standardized testing to judge a child's knowledge is archaic and detrimental to true education. Using standardized testing to test teachers is just a continuation of taking the easy way out instead of being innovative. But, regardless of my opinion, robot-like testing isn't going away, and teacher quality is a highly controversial and hot political issue. I glaze over these reports because I think they're a farce, but I think many of you would be interested in knowing where to find the actual studies on "Quality Teaching" that are running amuck in the headlines.

When a new study comes out, the source, or some relationship to the source, is usually quoted in the article. Sometimes the source is vague, such as "a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation." Gee thanks. Do you KNOW how many different studies they've funded? I don't know either, but all their financial reports are online if you want to dig through. While you're at it, you can do a search for "teacher quality" on their website and get some useful reports. However, their pet MET (Methods of Effective Teaching) project is intertwined with recent teacher quality reports.

At least the Washington Examiner in their "Teacher Quality Study Ranks NY 13th Among States" article was nice enough to lead readers to the National Council of Teacher Quality website with a link at the end of the article. However, as an article in the magazine Governing points out, data is too often collected, but not shared.

Let's start with the National Council of Teacher Quality. Their purpose is to increase the number of effective teachers, and they are "committed to lending transparency and increasing public awareness about the four sets of institutions that have the greatest impact on teacher quality: states, teacher preparation programs, school districts and teachers unions" without partisanship getting in the way. There's about 50 different agencies that fund the Council. This is the organization that the press is getting data from.

The 2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook has all the juicy data on why NY is 13th and how states have failed to make much progress. The National Council of Teachers seem to like the letter "C." It's safe. It's average. It's the grade most states (teachers) got. I bet Tennessee is loving the fact its at the top of the list and New York isn't. This Yearbook report is the report that all the Teacher Quality bashing articles floating around this mid-January 2012 are referring to. My beef? (Sorry vegetarian daughters.) My beef is that this report is on teacher quality inclusive of school and state policy changes, yet the headlines floating around tout teacher quality, with little or no mention of the extreme impact that school policies have on the final grade for teacher quality. Kids get misjudged by things that aren't seen all the time too, so I do feel for the teachers and states. And that is why it is so important that we know WHERE these "grades" for teacher quality are coming from when we start reading headlines about teacher quality. At least then you're armed with information on why these headlines and studies are a farce.

A very helpful tool on the Teacher Quality Council website is a place where You can build a custom report based on state, district, poverty levels, unions and bargaining, tenure, and all kinds of neat little variables.

Now let's look at the Data Quality Campaign and see what they have to offer for Teacher Quality statistics. Their purpose is to use the data to promote student achievement, and they have a strong focus on longitudinal studies. Their list of funding sources isn't as long as the Council on Teacher Quality, but Pew Research and the Gates are involved. You'll find charts that show which states are using the data they have, and which aren't and lots of suggestions on how data can and should be used. If you're interested in data implementation, data warehouses, and data coordinating efforts, then you'll be interested in the Data Quality Campaign website. But, if you just want straight-forward teacher quality information, you can skip the Quality Campaign website. Going to the Gates' foundation College Ready Education topic page gives you links to more useful teacher quality articles pdf style.

If you're bored, you can always sift through Ed.gov's website results for "teacher quality", or the results from the search engine on this blog (which I'm currently updating). The National Education Association has almost 30,000 results for teacher quality, but Ed Week had a sparse showing of articles in a search for teacher quality, the articles were even sparser for the search term at the Association for American Educators' website.

The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality reports itself as a national resource for data with a goal to help the schools with the highest poverty rates and lowest performance rate. They have a database on State Teacher Evaluation Policies ,a bunch of interactive tools for evaluation that some of you might find useful, and what looks like to be a nice research library for data and research.

Of course, all this data and research is for the grants. It's always nice to read an article about small-town grant winners from Teacher Quality programs like those in Cleveland, TN who can now forge ahead in biotech. But more common are the articles bemoaning teacher quality. NBC's article on New York's faring in the quality test states that no state got an A. Doesn't that say something about the teacher?

Statistics on College Student Suicides and 2007 Suicide Stats

Suicide. Fortunately, what prompted me to write this post is not a family suicide, nor the fact that I haven't written on this blog in a couple years, but rather my daughter's venting about her suicide training during Resident Assistant training at college. (We were laughing at instances of being trained to do the obvious. For instance, call 911 if you see someone unconscious on the floor. Really? And I thought they were supposed to hide the body under the bed.)

Suicide training started with the 2004 Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act which is again facing Congress. This is the government's attempt to to support and enhance suicide prevention efforts in colleges and universities. We all know how the government works. Hence, the increase in suicides. Northwest Missouri University has an older paper addressing suicide training, and it's worth reading if you're delving into suicide research.

Regardless of our jokes about suicide training and training programs in general, my daughter and I have both known people who have tried to kill themselves, and we've known people who have committed suicide. I was going to do a post on suicide statistics - way too much information. Thought I'd narrow down the topic to suicide statistics in the US and then do another post about international statistics. Way too much information. Seeing as I had one son graduate from college this year, another daughter start college this year, and my daughter who was suicidal about her suicide training is a junior this year, it's appropriate to narrow it down to suicide and college kids, or teens, or whatever this evolves into.

If you need quick International Statistics, the 2011 US Census Report has 2006 suicide statistics on this pdf file - Korea and Hungary have the highest rates (much higher for men in both countries), and Greece has the lowest. In the US, more women commit suicide than men, and statistically speaking the US is somewhere in the middle. (Technical huh?) There's a multitude of more indepth statistics out there - you can use the search engine on my blog to search World Health Organization and all those great places. Everyone else can continue reading.

Back to the US. The (one of many) Official 2007 Statistics on Mortality is on the National Vital Statistics Report of 2007, Volume 58, Number 19. If you're looking for any statistics on death, this report is a good place to look. Suicide is listed as the 11th most common cause of death. (Technically, it's "intentional self-harm" - although I've read that intentional self-harm without death is technically not considered a suicide attempt. Wonder if the Emo generation changed that.)

Here's an interesting statistic - according to the above report, there are more suicides then there are murders. Homicide comes in at number 15. That does surprise me. When you bring race into the death rates, it turns out that blacks are far more likely to die from homicide, but whites are far more likely than blacks to die from suicide (If you're white, your chance of dying from suicide is twice as high as it would be if you were black.)

So what about guns? Here's what the report says:

Firearm suicide at 55.6 percent and homicide at 40.5 percent were the two major component causes of all firearm injury deaths in 2007.

Do you think it would be harder to pull the trigger on your own brain or someone else's?

Another fact to consider: suicide rates went up (3.7%), but deaths due to heart disease and cancer went down. Total deaths in the US were lower in 2007 then they were in 2006. All those statistics are in that Vital Statistics report above.

From the report:

The death rate for suicide has decreased slightly from a high of 13.7 deaths per 100,000 standard population in 1977 to a low of 10.4 in 2000.

Since 2000, the age adjusted death rate for suicide has increased by 8.7 percent [emphasis added].

Well that's not good. Gee, in 1999 the Surgeon General said there was a problem. In 2000 it was at it's lowest, but rose every year thereafter. In 2004 the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act was first passed. The suicide rate keeps rising. In fact, the suicide rate was the highest during the years that the government started getting involved in training. Funny how it was going down before the government got involved.

There is an interesting article from BioMed Central that questions the correlation and classifications of suicide and accidental poisoning. Their conclusion?

The official decline in the suicide rate between 1987 and 2000 may have been a partial artifact of misclassification of non-elderly suicides within unintentional poisoning mortality. We recommend in-depth national, regional, and local population-based research investigations of the poisoning-suicide nexus, and endorse calls for widening the scope of the definition of suicide and evaluation of its risk factors.

The above referred to paper includes interesting charts and trends, and it was just published in late 2010. Definitely worth reading if you're interested in statistics on suicide trends.

Personally I'd be looking up statistics on the increase in homework and suicide rates. (Okay, I admit it's not as simple as that - luckily.) But negative moods do create suicide tendencies. And it would be stating the obvious if I said happy people are less likely to commit suicide. Unfortunately, our genetics and serotonin levels and a multitude of other factors scientists are just learning about influence our lives and minds. Moods come in swings. (Ask any teenager or pregnant woman and they'll confirm that for you.) And apparently so do happiness levels in cities. The government's Healthfinder found that the states and nations that had the higher happiness levels, also had the higher suicide rates. The USA Today has an easy-reading list of state suicide rates from lowest to highest. Highest rate? Alaska. Lowest? Washington D.C.

If you like trends, the U.S. Vital Statistics has suicide trends from 1985 to 2004 depicted in several graphs in their Trends in Rates and Methods in Suicide. However they make the argument that due to interpretations of statistics, suicide rates have actually been declining up to 2004. One interesting fact they point out for 20-24 year olds (college students), is that firearms deaths have been decreasing, whereas suffocation has been increasing. If you start reading the 2007 report and these trend charts, you might come up with conflicting information. Have fun with that.

If you want to look at earlier statistics on suicides, this CDC sheet is from 2007 and lists suicide trends for Youths and Young Adults Aged 10-24 from 1990 to 2004. This report also addresses the change firearm related suicides and hanging/suffocation suicides. It's rather shocking how much hanging increased! From their suicide trend report:

In 2004, hanging/suffocation was the most common method among females in all three age groups, accounting for 71.4% of suicides in the group aged 10--14 years, 49% in the group aged 15--19 years, and 34.2% in the group aged 20--24 years.

In addition, from 2003 to 2004, hanging/suffocation suicide rates among females aged 10--14 and 15--19 years increased by 119.4% (from 0.31 to 0.68 per 100,000 persons) and 43.5% (from 1.24 to 1.78), respectively [emphasis added].

The report also mentions that a choking game was popular at the time.

Eerie to think about all these young people hanging themselves. But not unbelievable. My girls went to school with a couple kids that hung themselves during high school (not from playing a choking game). They also had a close friend who came home to find their dad hanging, still alive, in the garage from a botched suicide attempt. I have a neighbor who had a daughter who hung herself in her bedroom closet. These statistics aren't imaginary. And they are most likely under-reported. (The whole topic of under-reported suicide statistics could fill volumes of books - or should I say millions of Google pages.)

Much of the information reported in US Vital Statistics (and elsewhere on the web) is derived from reports by the Inventory of National Injury Data Systems. You'll find information on types of suicides, mortality, health, car accidents and anything related to health and injury somewhere in their links. They work with the Center for Disease Control and vice-versa on WISQARS, the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, definitely worth visiting.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has a suicide statistics fact sheet. And another page they have on suicide statistics is a chart showing breakdown by age. I tried posting the chart, but it's not aligning. It's easy enough for you to click the link to the chart or copy and paste the chart off that link if you need it. Interesting fact: teens and college student suicides are declining, but 30+ are increasing. So maybe there is something to the government training...

Nah.

If you can't gather enough statistics about suicides and college students from the above links and from in this blog's statistic search engine, you can extract some statistics from these links:

Harvard Crimson 2009 article talks about college students and contemplating suicide.

MIT Year 2000 college suicide and national tends.

Some Harvard Stats on guns, homicide and suicide.

I'm linking you to an outdated page at the National Alliance of Mental Health (NAMI) but there's organizations listed on the bottom that could be useful as well. And of course the National Institute of Mental Health will have zillions of statistics.

The Children's Trend Data Bank is a new website to me, and they have a post on teens, homicides, suicides and guns.

And here's an article on college students exhibiting more mental illness.

And of course, search results from the search engine on my blog has a lot more links on suicide statistics about young adults, so you can start contemplating all the contrary missing information that is out there about suicide and suicide data.

At another CDC Prevention Fact Sheet, we find the sobering statistic that:

Among young adults ages 15 to 24 years old, there are approximately 100-200 attempts for every completed suicide.

Although that's sad, we can look at it as every 100 to 200 young adults get another chance at life. Next time depression hits, perhaps they'll take their chance at life, instead of taking their life. I think it's our job to show them there is value in life.

Car Accident Statistics, Fatalities, Women Drivers and a Few Drunks

Car accident statistics seemed like a good topic to post since my two teens are in the midst of getting their driver's licenses and their first (very used) cars. On top of that, my latest writing assignment was coincidentally on car insurance - just as I was panicking over how high my car insurance rates will rise once they're both on my policy. Fortunately, I have stayed alive to write this post even through their first bout of city driving.

Just to warn everyone - there's going to be a couple more women drivers on the road. Statistically speaking, despite slanderous jargon about women drivers (mostly from my father), people should be grateful that these two new drivers are women and not men. Even recent 2007 fatality statistics by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that men are the drivers in the high majority of fatal accidents. The Institute's 2007 Fact Sheet has charts demonstrating fatal accident and gender statistics from 1975 to 2007.

Of course, the Center for Disease Control's Teen Driver Fact Sheet's mention of car accidents being the number one reason for teenage deaths in the US doesn't help me sleep well at night when my teens are out with their friends. But within these teenage statistics from the CDC is the data that teen female drivers between the ages of 16 and 19 are far less likely to die than their male friends. The CDC looks like they also have some interactive statistics and mapping toys that can be used to investigate car accident statistics.

Personally, if I were to compare my older boys with my two teen girls and their driving style, I have one in each gender that is very cautious and rule abiding, and I also have on in each gender that is over-confident about their driving abilities. Over-confidence can be a killer, but it is probably not as deadly as alcohol. (However, that's debatable. We haven't mastered measuring car accidents due to over-confidence yet.)

Men are responsible for the majority of alcohol realted deaths. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in their gender report states the difference:

From 1982 to 2007, the proportion of fatally injured passenger vehicle drivers with blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) at or above 0.08 percent declined by 29 percent among males and 37 percent among females. Since 1985 the percentage of fatally injured male drivers with high BACs has been about twice that of female drivers.

Under the quote in that report is data from the 1980s to 2007 that lists statistics on alcohol related car accidents and BAC levels. The good news is that alcohol related fatal deaths are decreasing. And so are car accidents. CNN has a news article summarizing some alcohol related car accident statistics.

In the US, car accidents reached their all-time low since the rumbling days of hot rods and drag racing in the 1960s and the peak of the 1970s according to 2008 statistics (reported in June 2009) from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in their 2008 statistics summary of traffic safety facts. If you need to go global, you'll find some links on the US Department of State Travel page that has links to transportation and traffic statistics. (More global websites for international car accident statistics are listed later on in this blog post.)

Here is a link to the cache version of the NHTSA report that appears in Google Doc form:

Google Doc version of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA)2008 Traffic Safety Facts.

Here is a link to the pdf version of the NHTSA report:

PDF version of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA)2008 Traffic Safety Facts.

Overall, the number of people injured in car accidents in the US dropped from the 2.49 million in 2007 to "only" 2.35 million in 2008. The 2008 NHTSA car accident statistic report has a lot of valuable statistics and data and is likely one of the more recent sources for car accident statistics. You can also take a look at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics website for traffic data to support car accident data research. You'll also find some car accident statistics hiding in railroad, airline and boat accident statistics. (I have more research links on plane crashes and holiday travel statistics under the "transportation" labeled blog posts if you need more information in those areas.)

Another popular source for car accident statistics is the FARS - Fatality Analysis Report System. They have comparative statistics of car accidents and motorcycle accidents in a nicely laid out table that runs from 1994 to 2007. Ratios, mileage and population comparisons are listed as well as car accident statistics involving pedestrians and bicylists. FARS also has links to 2007 car accident statistics by state, (no surprise that California has the most and Rhode Island has the least) which list fatal accident statistics, as well as car accident statistics that involve a collision with an object. Their car accident reports by state also includes a page of alcohol related car accident statistics and BAC level statistics by state.

The FARR website also has links to trends and other reports, data and statistics on vehicle accidents. They even have a link to an excellent query page that offers tabulation reports on all sorts of data like vehicle types, times, license status, driver height, and all kinds of goodies. Great stuff if you need to get down and dirty and put your stats into a spreadsheet or need some good data to prove or refute a point. Ooooo time to play...wow that's great - after doing a query you get to go to see the full information of each report filed if you want. Code 11 in sequence of events is hitting an animal. I was just looking at deer statistics, however I know that there are always people hitting deer around here and getting their cars dented, but accident reports are hardly ever made.

Since I have no need for the data now I better stop playing. Let's move on to global and international car accident statistics. What better place to start than the World Health Organization. WHO knows everything about what's going on in the world, because in one way or another, everything will probably affect a person's health. They even have a page on world car accident information. A 2004 page describes motor vehicle accidents as a "hidden epidemic" with statistics backing up the claim. WHO has a lot of pdf reports on road injuries and road safety around the world.

There is a "Causes of Death" Excel file on the World Health Organizations Data and Statistics page that gives you a great spreadsheet of deaths by countries, and it includes data on deaths due to "road traffic accidents" by country. On the Pan American page of unintentional accidents on the WHO website you can find a link to a world traffic injury and prevention report that contains road traffic and vehicle accident research and statistics. You can also take a look at a WHO European page that shows some car accident statistics that closely mirrors the US and a list of links to European road traffic safety, injury and transport reports. You can also find some nice graphs and charts in the 2007 European Road Safety Day car accident and traffic safety report.

The BAST (Federal Highway Research Institute in Germany) has pdfs and links to car accident statistics in Germany.

A google book result brings up the WHO's World Report on Road Traffic which contains a lot of statistics and information, although I'm not sure how the information on the website differs from the information in the book, but it might be quicker just to look at the google book result to get a quick overview of international car accident statistics.

Wikipedia has links to resources for car accident statistics on their entry for Traffic Collision and Road Traffic Safety. From there you'll also see a Wikipedia link to information on the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, Road Casulaties Great Britain, a list of car accidents (motor vehicle accidents) in Japan and car accidents in Thailand.

UK car accident statistics can be found on the Department of Transport (DfT) website page containing transportation and traffic statistics and statistics on UK accidents. They also have a report on forecasting older driver accidents.

If those aren't enough, you can find more UK car accident statistics at the UK's Office of National Statistics (ONS) website and their page on UK road traffic accident statistics. The British Medical Journal has a free text study which includes statistics comparing car accident police reports and hospital records. (I love the BMJ and use it a lot. I wish all journals would provide free full text!)

If you want to go a wee bit south in the Commonwealth and need some car accident statistics on New South Wales, Australia, head over to their Road and Traffic Authority website and look at their page on crash statistics for free download information on Australia car accident statistics.

Staying south, the South African Department of Transportation website has a link to car accident statistics and road safety information in South Africa covering 2001 to 2005,with some statistics from the 1990s thrown in. There's also graphs in the report comparing South Africa statistics to Australia, China and other countries. Other statistics on South Africa car accidents can be found at the "about us" page Road Safety in South Africa and the "Arrive Alive" website that published the "about us" post, including some 2009 accident stats from Africa's N4 Toll Route.

Science Daily, (one of my favorite websites), has a short article stating some car accident statistics in Africa while claiming that Africa has the highest death rate from car accidents compared to other countries. If you're interested in data collection methods used in collecting Africa car accident statistics, someone was kind enough to upload a report on the implementation and process of using a MAPP data collection method in Africa. (If you're interested in more links on statistics and data involving Africa in general, take a look at my blog posts tagged Africa.)

If you want to delve into some car accident statistics and road traffic statistics, check out the uploaded documents at thesearch results at Scribd for "road traffic accidents," and the graphs and charts posted on "car accidents" at Swivel, or even the "road traffic safety" search results from my blog (that now needs some serious updating).

Looking at these stats, I'm very grateful that my life has never been touched directly by a fatal car accident, although my teenagers always seem to know somebody who knows somebody who was in a near-fatal accident. I have known a few women from church who lost their teens in car accidents - an unbearable thought to me. My boyfriend, however, was touched directly by fatal accidents, and lost his brother and his son to two different motorcycle accidents (years apart) - one caused by a drunk driver in a car, and one caused by teenage over-confidence. No statistic in the world can represent that loss and pain of losing a family member, and especially a child.

It's good to see that car accidents are being lowered, and drunk driving is on a downhill slide. I hope the road safety advocates keep up the good work and are continuously successful at saving lives and keeping our young ones alive.

Foreclosure Statistics and Foreclosure Defense Links

Foreclosure news is getting tiring, but since I'm joining the ranks of people with their houses in foreclosure and I haven't written in a while, I thought I'd throw up a post on foreclosure statistics to help those who are looking to find the latest foreclosure statistics. Personally, I'm just sick of reading about and dealing with foreclosure news and information. On top of my own foreclosure, I've had a few assignments writing articles on foreclosure and bankruptcy. No pity for me though, I'm looking forward to moving, my house is falling apart, and the house is in my ex-husband's name whom I haven't seen in four years. It'll be a weather shock though - we're planning on moving from NY to the Tri-cities area in TN. I'll be positioned right in the middle of my kids in PA, VA and NC. I'm tired of fighting winter and I have a low-tolerance for the cold, so I'll appreciate the above-zero no-shoveling-or-getting-stuck-in-the-driveway winters.

If you're looking for NY courts, forms and regulations, try the New York State Unified Court System website, and their page with a couple new 2008 foreclosure regulations. You can also find lots of court forms needed for foreclosure proceedings at the NY Bar Association website. A NY Times May 2009 article stated foreclosures are happening now more than ever in NY, so I don't feel all alone. The article has some easy to refer to charts and statistics as well. CNN reported that California is suffering from the most foreclosures, and also brought to light that the children suffer as a result of unexpected and financially difficult moves. Even as a mother of six, I hadn't given thought to the great impact foreclosure has on young children. Perhaps because my kids are going off to college anyhow (4 down, 2 to go), and the remaining two and I are looking forward to moving. I do think the effects of foreclosure on children is a topic that definitely deserves more attention, and likely more study.

Statehealth.org has foreclosure ranks and percentage changes by state. Virginia University has a 2009 report ccomparing foreclosure and housing statistics between states and metro areas. The Center for Housing Policy, a partner of the National Housing Conference, has a comprehensive state and metro comparison, drop down search option for statistics by metro area on their "Paycheck to Paycheck" analysis, and a list of housing and foreclosure reports.

If you need Federal data and statistics on foreclosure, the Federal Reserve Board has foreclosure maps and foreclosure trends, as well as a dedicated area for foreclosure resources. Docuticker is a "ticker" website of updated government news, and has updates of the latest foreclosure news from government agencies. You can always review the latest foreclosure search results from the White House website, or US Treasury search results on foreclosure,. The FDIC has some random foreclosure statistics, and if you want to browse through some 2009 foreclosure statistics in pdf files you can take a look at the FDIC's foreclosure search results. If you're looking for information on the banking industry, the FDIC also has links to banking data and statistics (obviously). The FDIC has a quarterly report in pdf form that you can view for 2009 statistics.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) gets quoted a lot in the news, but they don't have a lot of free statistics on their website. However, the Research Institute of Housing America (RIHA) is a trust 501(c) under the Mortgage Bankers Association, and is a good source for mortgage and housing data. You can also find the latest foreclosure statistics in news articles from websites like Market Watch.

Having a blog post on foreclosure statistics would be incomplete without mentioning HUD. First of all, they have datasets from the oft-referred to yearly American Housing Survey. HUD also has a research link with some housing data and statistics, and an "online library" to pursue HUD related topics a little further.

If you've gone to Realty Trac, take a look at this recent article examining the accuracy of foreclosure statistics reported by Realty Trac. I just found the Foreclosure Industry website, and it looks like it's keeping up with current foreclosure statistics, and the "Loan Audit" blog that is keeping up with mortgage and housing news.

You'll also find more data and recent news on foreclosure from a search result at the search engine in my blog.

For anyone wanting some legal resources on affirmative defenses to foreclosure, or just general legal information on foreclosure, I found the "Foreclosure Defense Group" website helpful, and I believe I used information from the Patriot's War website (although it was on their old website, they have a lot of info on their new one). NOLO is a publisher of legal books and their website is to promote their products, but they have a lot of links to free information, and I've often found their website very helpful in the beginning stages of research. They also have a useful page dedicated to foreclosure information and proceedings. You can also take a look at Kenneth M DeLashmutt's very nice article which includes easy to understand steps and defenses as well as a few case citations and useful foreclosure links. The Preventing Foreclosure blog has useful information, foreclosure defenses, and forms. If you haven't paid a visit to Scribd, they have tons of documents that people have uploaded to search. Try the search results for foreclosure or foreclosure affirmative defenses. There's also the Foreclosure Defense Nationwide blog with case citations and quotes from court foreclosure filings.

Above all, if you know someone who has received a Summons and Complaint for a foreclosure, make sure they serve their legal Answer within 20 days, even if it's "pro se." It will stall the foreclosure for months, and they'll have time to either get an attorney, look into loan modification, arbitration and settlement opportunities, deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, short sales, bankruptcy, and other prevention strategies and foreclosure options, or even wait for upcoming help for homeowners. There's a lot out there, and if you serve an Answer in time, you'll have time to review those options. Shoot me an email at getanswerserved at gmail dot com if you need some help typing up an answer to serve "pro se" and can't afford an attorney.

Well, I'm still sick of reading about foreclosure but they're not going away any time soon. I know there are thousands of other resources out there, unfortunately I wasn't able to pinpoint them all. I'll keep updating my blog's search engine so you can always check for more foreclosure statistics.

It's time for me to pack up now (pathetic pun intended)...happy statistics hunting or happy house hunting!

P.S. How could I forget my dear friend Swivel? Don't forget to check out foreclosure statistics, graphs and charts created by the Swivel community!

Buffalo's Bash the Grass Cuts Grass and Leads to Quicksand

Statistics are often muddled by city officials hoping to promote their faltering city - or themselves. (Take a look at this New York Times article on Rudolph Guiliani, Hillary and Obama for starters.) Journalists and corporate interest groups get in on the act, and before you know it, the muddled statistics are worshipped with biblical reverence. Buffalo's recent publicising on their "Quality of Life" efforts - increasing tickets on overgrown lawns, indoor furniture on outdoor porches, and unregistered vehicles in a yard - is a prime example. (Junk car removal services surely have financial interest!)

The article starts out with:

Crime in the neighborhood “took a nose dive,” said Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson. Assaults, robberies, burglaries and rapes dropped by double-digit percentages last month compared with a year earlier. Motor vehicle thefts dropped 39 percent. Even larceny dropped slightly.

Mentioning only briefly

"While a special robbery detail likely contributed to the drop in crime, city officials give much of the credit to the quality-of-life squad,"

before going on and on about the benefits of ticketing people for overgrown grass. (Buffalo limits grass growth to ten inches). The "special robbery detail" isn't expounded on at all. But - giving Buffalo the benefit of the doubt (not really) - it is possible they didn't have all the statistics since apparently the mayor had to ORDER the police to give crime access data to the media.

Since I live in a safe rural area, amongst fields and unregistered cars and haven't locked my door in five years and people park in "town" with their keys in their car - I found this methodology absurd. (Long grass raising crime?) Since I am disabled and raised my kids as a single parent working full time most of their lives - I found it even more absurd. (Hmmm leave the kids alone in the house, feed the baby, or cut the lawn? Buy diapers, pay the babysitter to work, pay bills, take the kids out for ice-cream, or pay someone to cut the lawn? Ice-cream wins every time.) Looking out the window and realizing we haven't gone even a week without rain turned the absurdity turned to infuriation.

"Don't sweat the small stuff" is a mantra I've lived by long before the book came out. In fact, when I read it I thought "I already know all this." (Raising six kids you learn REAL quick not to sweat the small stuff! And sorry about the overused cliche but it's repeatedly used in the Buffalo News related articles.) I've also learned "nip it in the bud" is an equally important cliche. Are my kids going to stay away from crime if my lawn is cut? Will the kids in school stop offering them drugs if my lawn is cut?

I've seen more than a few coke-induced and alcoholic mothers with impeccable homes and yards over the years. (Outside appearances are important to police - and many of them know that.) Health, education, economy and loving relationships impact crime a hundred fold over long grass. If you want to start small - start with health, education and economy - then move to drugs. Violent crimes and murders would likely be reduced from there. Invest in free health care. Invest in education. Invest in small businesses and lower taxes. Don't add stress to struggling residents. Everybody's working for gas to get to work now. Who can afford a ticket?

Is $60 and $150 fines for grass growing more than ten inches the key to stopping crime? Crime across the nation has decreased steadily - even without intense "bash the grass" police parties. (Decrease in crime humorously correlated with an increase of wine consumption on swivel.com.)

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics property crime rates have nationally been on a steady decrease since 1993. "Property Crime" can have many definitions. But if we look at the FBI data from 2007 we see that property crime in Buffalo increased. Property crime in these sets include burglary, larceny, motor-vehicle theft and arson - exactly the crimes that the Bash the Grass (my name) Quality of Life program is meant to deter. Statistical relationships? In 2007, the same year, they bragged about "record number of tickets for Quality of Life being issued."

"Causation" and "Statistical Correlation" are two different things. Factcheck.org brings up an interesting point when considering handgun ownership to violent crimes. Statistical correlations don't take into consideration WHY a person buys a gun. A comparison of gun ownership in a rural area to crime would vary significantly from the same comparison to urban areas. Has anyone compared those who purchased a gun for hunting purposes against those who purchase guns for protection and the correlation to violent crime? (Personally, I have the Bambi syndrome and don't like guns - but they are a significant part of our constitutional rights - and you never know when you may need to exercise that right. God forbid WWIII is in the works.)

If Buffalo thinks cut lawns are going to increase newcomers to Buffalo - they have another thing coming. I would bet that people look at crime rates and educational standards before taking a ruler to the grass in the neighborhood. Buffalo wouldn't get past the crime and educational evaluations.

Looking for Outliers had a great post on Journalism and Auditors and makes a valid point that an audit can "increase public confidence." Having run my own business and being the sort of owner that keeping receipts in a shoebox would be a step up - auditors make me nervous. But "AuditorPOV" make an auditor seem - well - almost human.

Most people are smart enough not to believe everything they read. Fact-checking is a time consuming process. Journalists and auditors frequently serve the public to protect us from political and corporate influences. Unfortunately, many journalists and auditors also have political and corporate motives to manipulate information and statistics. (Hmmm, maybe I should add bloggers to that list...)

While searching for statistics, I found (surprisingly) that short search terms fared better than "long tail" search terms for statistics.

Having vented enough - and spending too much time looking at statistics I have no use for - I'll leave some links for crime statistics:

FBI Uniform Crime Reports for Nation, State and Region

Bureau of Justice Statistics

USA.gov State and Local and lots of other links!

US Census Bureau 2008 Abstract

Lots of Law and Crime Links including statutes, statistics and journals.

Listing of Encyclopedias and Links on Crime

Buffalo Fights Crime Report 2008

Mayors' Action Forum on Crime

• Buffalo, NY: Gangs are in almost every neighborhood. This has led to more violence in
schools. Youth are committing more street crimes, such as robberies and shootings.

White House Social Statistics Briefing Room


I'm not doing this list "justice" (no pun intended until after I wrote that) - but I'll keep adding to the list in the future. If you need more stats - try the search engine in this blog - it's set up to search only websites with statistics. (The database increases regularly so if you can't find the information you need now - it may be there at another date.)

Guess I'll go watch the grass grow now...



Book to for Serious Sleuths:
The Technology of Policing: Crime Mapping, Information Technology, and the Rationality of Crime Control


Or try these:

Browsing Browser Statistics

Reporting Statistics does hereby give thanks to Ourblogtemplates.com for providing me with a blog template that works in Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer.

I'm an avid Opera browser fan, but according to www.w3school.com and their 2008 Browser Statistics, I'm in the minority. Internet Explorer is still the most widely used browser, but Firefox is quickly meeting them halfway. W3school reports that as of July 2008, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 are running neck and neck, and 26.4% and 25.3% respectively. Some late adopters, only .3%, are still hanging on to IE5. Firefox has gained almost half the market - quickly gathering up 42.6% of internet users. Poor Opera, only 1.9% have realized how wonderful the Opera browser is. Opera is a lot faster than IE and Firefox and is highly customizable. Disclosure: I have nothing to gain by promoting any browser. I just really like Opera. Hey, out of 215 million internet users in the US alone reported by Plunkett Research, 1.9% isn't too bad.

A great website that I visit frequently for Internet stats is Internet World Stats. If you need Internet Statistics, you'll find demographics like local, global, regional Internet and population information and all kinds of graphs to go along with it. Internet Stats is in my permanent bookmarks. I think they may sell some data, but there are pages and pages of free data for you to use to give your reports or research some more awe-inspiring data. (THAT many people are on the Internet?!!? I didn't even know that many people were alive!)

I'm adding to this post on August 26, 2008 after reading some more browser statistics on Tech Republic. The browser share they quote from The Counter is significantly different than W3Schools. (The Counter charges $19.95 and W3Schools is free.) They list IE at 77% and Firefox at 17%. I don't know about you - but that sounds far too low for fast-growing Firefox. For this blog, Firefox is the browser of choice and holds the majority at 41% and IE at 28%. W3School is given high regard in developer circles - and if you need to quote some browser statistics - quote the statistics from W3School. The Tech Republic article has some interesting comments and it's a worthwhile read for developers.

Adding to the post September 18, 2008: Just found this link with a graph on browsers in Russia from the Russian Opera blogger Andrey Petrov. Here are some more Opera browser statistics from his blog. He has a new baby in the home..so the posts are a little outdated - but I thought they might be of interest to someone researching browser statistics.

Update November 2009: Google Chrome Captures 3.6% of market.

2009 trends in browser statistics according to W3schools. Woo hoo! Opera is up to 2.3%!

For interest, there's a January 2009 article which lists reasons why statistics from the past may be skewed (i.e, election time).

Then there's Opera mini which has a far larger global share in the mobile browser wars.

Statistics on browsers in Russia.

The Opera 10 announcement at Canada.com states:

Microsoft's Internet Explorer is used for about 60 percent of global Internet traffic, and Mozilla's Firefox has about 30 percent, with usage of Opera, Google and Apple all around 3 percent each, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.

Opera has a small share of the global desktop browser market, but its browser is the most popular in countries like Russia or Ukraine, and its mobile browser is the most widely used browser on handsets.

Opera also has their "State of the Mobile Web" report with current global statistics on mobile browser usage, particularly Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Nonetheless, a simple chart showing the growth of Opera mini clearly demonstrates it's growth, and Stat Counter has 2009 statistics demonstrating that Opera Mini is overtaking the Iphone for mobile browsing. A September 2009 article from FinChannel (global financial news), also reports Opera Mini as the most popular mobile browser. Their quote:

Now, more than 31.9 million people use Opera Mini to browse the Web from their mobile phones. In August, Opera Mini gained at least one new user every second.

An article from Tech Arena has the same quote, but it goes further to list Opera statistics from Europe and around the globe. Here's their take on the top countries using Opera Mini:

The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, Nigeria, United Kingdom and Poland. There is no change to the top 10 countries this month.

But, those top 10 have changed. WatBlog reports the current top ten as of September as:

Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam

They also list the top sites visited in India, comparing Google, Yahoo and others, and has other stats on Opera mobile browsing from September 2009.

Since I have other posts related to Africa and I'm finding interest in statistics from Africa from my readers, here's a website dedicated to PC and phone mobility in Nigeria, with statistics on Opera Mini in Nigeria.

There is a very resourceful wiki at W3org that lists mobile browsing statistics in developing countires, and has links to statistics on mobile browsing in Africa, including a Africa 2008 Mobile Fact Book in pdf format, and a pdf file with 2009 stats on mobile phone usage in Africa. More statistics on Africa browsing and mobility, including the expensive costs and transmission data, can be found at Martin Sauter's blog post on Africa and the Mobile Internet.

Boy did this update take on an angle I didn't expect. I'll have to get these recent links into my search engine.

Have fun keeping up with the browser wars - and don't let the statistics on mobile browser wars go unnoticed.

Community Data Websites and Data on Communities

Found a great blog by Ben Warner that has links to some other Web 2.0 communities that share statistical data and even work together to merge data sets. Ben (even though I don't know him) introduced me to Data 360 which is really worth exploring if you are looking to merge some data sets. Data 360 is chock full of statistics on the US Government, Energy, Global Issues and all that fun stuff. On a lighter side is My Visuals which prides themselves in their pretty pictures. If you look through the hubs and datasets you'll find data on population, education, labor, fuel, deaths and even cereal bars. There's over 500 so you will probably find something useful - or at least interesting.

If you are an advocate for community reform, pay a visit Ben's Blog Community Indicators. You will find links that are useful for every facet of community development research. I'll be adding his useful links to our future blog post with a list of free statistics.

Take a few minutes to explore these three data filled websites and you'll be thrilled that you did.

Then take a break and do some shopping!

Links for Data and Statistics

Swivel is a great place to find obscure data.

www.swivel.com

If you haven't visited swivel yet, you need to take a spin over. Swivel is a statistical junkie's paradise. Random data on economics, entertainment, health, politics, science, society, sports, technology and miscellaneous topics are submitted from the swivel community complete with graphs and pictures. You can find pie charts, bar graphs, links to spreadsheets, polls, information on web 2.0, water pollution, crime, and the top ten and top 100 on just about anything.

Here's some demographic data on blogging that's available through the Creative Commons license:

http://www.swivel.com/users/show/1008410

Thanks to "grjenkin" (makes me think of little gherkin pickles) over at Swivel. I don't know "grjenkin" but looks like he has a great blog for more statistics at "Garry's Blog" . If you're looking for prison statistics and are a fanatic for reform like I am you'll love what he has to offer over at his blog - but even if you're not, Garry provides a wealth of data and statistics that can be applied to a wide array of subjects from MS to photography. If you're a junkie for justice you'll love Garry.






If you're into free speech, take a look at the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation by clicking on this banner. You need to make a donation to join but even if you don't, their website has indepth information on current court proceedings involving online activity and free speech.

Better get back to work..Cheers!