Students use data to visualize gun violence

January 31, 2017

We are living in a culture where there is strong opposition to sensible gun laws, yet nearly every day in Chicago, another young person’s life has been forever altered or taken by gun violence.  Given our location, it would be useful to shed an academic light on the families of persons affected and the policies that enable easy access to weapons—legal and illegal.  Chicago has also experienced a bit of infamy along with many other cities in the U.S. over possible excessive use of force between police officers and community members.  We live in a country that is unique in its constitutional protections for gun owners, yet the same protections do not at this time seem to be afforded to victims of gun violence gathering places like churches, movie theatres and shopping malls.

The articles published here represent work by students in the Fall 2016 Data Mining and Visualization course. This 300-level special topic course provided students the opportunity to go in-depth on the data surrounding these complex issues and to visualize them in a compelling way.

Site link: http://jbrown7.wixsite.com/socguns