With thanks to Cat van Saarloos for the data file, here’s a Quibans from the Daily Mirror.
Police release names most commonly linked with crime - and it's bad news for Davids
Choosing a baby's name can be a huge decision and many parents spend
time agonising over the choices in front of them.
What you are called can have a lasting impact on your life, but can it effect
the chances of you ending up behind bars?
Recent research conducted by casino experts Goodluckmate has
shown that some names are more common amongst troublemakers in the UK, with
David and Sarah topping the list.
Top 10 lawbreaking male names
1. David - 1,010
criminal charges
2. Daniel - 1,001
criminal charges
3. Michael - 895
criminal charges
4. Paul - 874 criminal
charges
5. James - 796
criminal charges
6. John - 742 criminal
charges
7. Mark - 742 criminal
charges
8. Lee - 701 criminal
charges
9. Christopher - 691
criminal charges
10. Andrew - 660 criminal
charges
Top 10 lawbreaking female names
1. Sarah - 117 criminal
charges
2. Amy - 111 criminal
charges
3. Claire - 104
criminal charges
4. Lisa - 103 criminal
charges
5. Lauren - 101
criminal charges
6. Kelly - 99 criminal
charges
7. Rachel - 98
criminal charges
8. Nicole - 85
criminal charges
9. Michelle - 80
criminal charges
10. Louise - 75
criminal charges
A spokesperson for Goodluckmate said: "Our names play a huge part
in our identity, but can they influence who we turn out to be? Are there some
names that are more likely to end up on a judge’s docket?
"We wanted to find out if a name can make someone more likely to
become a criminal, so we made Freedom of Information requests to police forces
around the country, asking for the names of people that were charged with
crimes in the last two years, so we could discover the names most likely to
commit crimes.
"In total, we
received 42,671 names from various police forces around the country, allowing
us to work out which names had the most criminal charges attached to
them."
Here is a first set of questions:
Question 1) What errors can you see in the article?
Question 2) Comment on this sentence: “We wanted to find out
if a name can make someone more likely to become a criminal”
Question 3) Is this a good use of public money?
Question 4) What is the problem with saying “people called
David are more likely to break the law”?
Question 5) What other information would it be useful to
have?
Question 6) How much more likely are men to commit crimes
than women?
And possible answers:
Answer 1) Aside from the maths/stats errors that appear below
(and which could also fit here), in this phrase “but can it effect the chances”
the word ‘effect’ should be ‘affect’.
Answer 2) This is a correlation vs causation
misunderstanding!
Answer 3) A casino company submitted a freedom of
information request (FOI) to police forces, asking for this information. The police forces legally have to respond to
FOI request, which costs time and money.
Is it worth it for a request like this?
(Well – it produced a Quibans, but I’m struggling to see any other use!)
Answer 4) If the name David is more common then there are
likely to be more law-breakers called David.
Answer 5) A list of how common each name is.
Answer 6) On the top ten lists there are 8112 males and 973
females, suggesting that men are 8.3 times as likely to commit a crime than women.
There is further information on the casino website:
The UK’s most popular names
When we look at the UK’s current most popular names, how do they measure up?
Question 7) Any comments about this?
Answer 7) I was wrong!
The names David and Sarah don’t appear on the list of most popular names.
But there is more.
Here’s the end of the casino article:
Methodology
We made Freedom of Information requests to
police forces around the UK asking for data regarding the first names of those
who had been charged with a crime in the 19/20 financial year within their
area. Of the constabularies we made requests to, 17 were able to send data,
amounting to a total of 42,671 names. We then took the total number of people
charged with each name, giving us our results.
When looking at the UK’s most popular names,
we took the top five names for baby boys and baby girls in the UK in 2019.
Question 8) What’s the problem with their methodology?
Question 9) What would be a more sensible thing to do instead? What other info do you need?
Answer 8) They are comparing the number of crimes committed by
people with each name in 2019-2020 with how many babies that name was given to
in 2019. If the frequency of names
changes year to year, then this is a daft comparison to make, because there won’t
be any babies in the crime figures!
Answer 9) It would be more sensible to use name-frequency
data from perhaps 30 years ago.
Cat has provided data from the ONS (Office for National Statistics),
showing the popularity of each name for each year ending in a ‘4’. Cat’s spreadsheet is here. The students could analyse this.
Here is the start of the spreadsheet for male names:
And here it is with the 10 names highlighted:
My analysis follows (but there are lots of other ways of
doing it).
Taking the average position for male names in the years 1964
(babies born then would be 55 in 2019), 1974 (age 45), 1984 (age 35) and 1994
(age 25), gives the following table.
David is second on the list:
|
Name |
Average position |
|
James |
7.5 |
|
David |
7.75 |
|
Christopher |
8 |
|
Michael |
8 |
|
Andrew |
8.5 |
|
Mark |
15.25 |
|
ROBERT |
15.25 |
|
John |
17.75 |
|
Paul |
18 |
|
RICHARD |
18 |
|
MATTHEW |
18.25 |
|
Daniel |
19.25 |
|
STEPHEN |
21.5 |
|
THOMAS |
21.5 |
|
JONATHAN |
23.5 |
|
STEVEN |
27 |
|
PETER |
27.25 |
|
NICHOLAS |
27.75 |
|
SIMON |
29.25 |
|
ANTHONY |
30.25 |
|
WILLIAM |
30.75 |
|
ADAM |
31.5 |
|
Lee |
33 |
Aside from Lee (position 23), the other nine names (which
are shown in lower case in the table) are all in the top 12.
If instead we focus only on 1974 and 1984 we get this list:
|
David |
3 |
|
Christopher |
3.5 |
|
James |
4.5 |
|
Paul |
5 |
|
Andrew |
5.5 |
|
Mark |
6 |
|
RICHARD |
6.5 |
|
Michael |
7 |
|
MATTHEW |
8 |
|
Daniel |
10 |
|
John |
13.5 |
|
Lee |
13.5 |
David appears at the top, and all of the ten names are within
the top 12.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-release-names-most-commonly-24044516
https://goodluckmate.com/misbehaving-monikers
Spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KrnBfaLiXf1Fjun6exmPXfRPYV_fzX8x/view
