Posted on 03/27/2013 9:22:04 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
FULL TITLE: How gang members behave like animals... and maths experts are now predicting where they will fight rivals with 99% accuracy
~Jeffrey Brantingham, UCLA anthropologist, uses statistics to study crime
~He used the Lotka-Volterra equation to accurately predict fight locations
~The theory states that species claim territories whose boundaries form a perpendicular line halfway between each group’s home
Maths experts have used geometric equations learned from wild animals to predict the location of fights between rival gangs with almost 99 per cent accuracy.
Jeffrey Brantingham, an anthropologist at UCLA, in California, who uses statistics to study crime, has employed a theory devised by Alfred Lotka, an American statistician, and Vito Volterra, an Italian mathematician, in the 1920s.
The pair observed that similarly sized rival groups of a species - from lions to hyenas - claim territories whose boundaries form a perpendicular line halfway between each group’s home, be it a den or a beehive.
Their findings - called the Lotka- Volterra equations - have been long used as a staple of ecological theory.
Brantingham applied it to 13 equally sized criminal gangs from the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles’ East Side.
He and his team, aided by police, identified an area or 'anchor point' which functioned as the gang's home base and used the Lotka- Volterra equation to draw borders between the turfs, Smithsonian.com reports.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
You and me both. Perpendicular to what I kept asking myself. How can you have a perpendicular boundary when the boundary is likely a spheroid of some sort.
There is only one formula to address the problem of feral youth: Dad + the Gospel of Jesus + Time with Dad.
Yea...mist unfair to rats and hyenas.
My guess is you draw a line connecting the home points and then bisect that line with a perpendicular.
So, it’s a “point on a line” between the two homes points perpendicular to the line that intersects both home points?
I say “point on a line” rather than “line” since the line is of infinite length and I assume the 99% figure is not discussing the whole line. Also, if your assumption is true, this isn’t exactly rocket science. ;-)
The problem is figuring out what the "gang center" is.
> ...These gangs for the most part are animals, unaware of health and sanitation in order
> to survive, so they will roam, leaving filth and disease where they vacate.
Happening now. Many of those gangs are called or hide under the term “homeless”.
That's an INSULT to the animals!!
I think the writer meant “equidistant from the home base”, but couldn’t remember the word or phrase.
bkmk
I loved that video. I think about it often when I hear about how many boys there are these days without a father around.
Draw a line between their “home bases”. Then make a line perpendicular to that. The intersection is where the fights will occur.
one more point, the line should bisect the other line.
The prof gets the “real men of genius” award!
marker
I assume you draw a line between the two locations and choose a line perpendicular to that.
Interesting.
Draw a line between their “home bases”. Then make a line perpendicular to that. The intersection is where the fights will occur.
I’m thinking they mean this:
Make the two home bases “points”. Draw a line of any length that intersects the two points. place a point on the line exactly between the two points on the line. Draw another line that intersects the first line at that new point and is perpendicular to the first line.
The intersection of the two lines is, in essence, the spot halfway between the two home bases, though you don’t need the second line to find this. The third point identifies it.
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