As I described in
this post, the reported number of homicides[1] in Chihuahua during 2009 turned out to be incomplete. Guess what? The
SNSP just released [xls file] an updated version of the homicide data, and Chihuahua went from having 2,523 homicides to 3,156. My estimate was 3,256, so I came pretty close. And the homicide rate for the whole country was 15, exactly what I predicted.
Score one for linear regression on
World Statistics Day. Now we’ll just have to wait until the
INEGI releases it’s numbers based on death certificates to see what the real number of homicide deaths was (3,600?).
Since the
SNSP conveniently forgot to mention that the first numbers it released in 2008 and 2009 were incomplete, and nothing like this had ever happened before, the official homicide statistics are turning into a real mess of incompatible numbers. For example,
this report from the ICESI uses the original 2008 data, and
this study by Mexico Evalúa and
this story in The Economist use the original data from 2009.
P.S. Here’s the code
[1] More accurately the number of police reports, which may contain more than one victim
