Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D.Software Engineering Professor and Consumer AdvocateAbout MeBookstoreCoursesPublicationsHomeRacial Profiling in Ferguson Missouri? A Note on Statistical InterpretationAugust 21st, 2014 As I write this, there is serious community tension in Ferguson, Missouri over the shooting and killing of a unarmed black teenager by a white police officer, and over the response to that shooting by the local police force.The narrative in much of the press is that this is yet another incident that illustrates a serious problem of racism in the United States, especially in our police. For example, many newspapers cite data from the Missouri 2013 Vehicle Stops Report. The overall report covers data in every county in Missouri and presents years of historical comparisons. The report specifically for Ferguson is here.Here are some examples of press coverage that seem representative of what I’ve seen in many papers online:“Last year, 86 percent of the cars stopped by Ferguson police officers were being driven by African-Americans, according to the state’s annual racial profiling report. Once pulled over in Ferguson, African-American drivers were twice as likely to be searched, according to the report.”http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/19/237001_feds-could-go-several-ways-in.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy“Last year, for the 11th time in the 14 years that data has been collected, the disparity index that measures potential racial profiling by law enforcement in the state got worse. Black Missourians were 66 percent more likely in 2013 to be stopped by police, and blacks and Hispanics were both more likely to be searched, even though the likelihood of finding contraband was higher among whites.”http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-michael-brown-and-disparity-of-due-process/article_40bb2d0e-8619-534a-b629-093ebc79f0a6.htmlOf course, there are some counter-examples. Some news reports (what I’ve seen on Fox, for example) seem to ignore these data completely and instead appear to me to present the events in terms of violent bad black people who deserve whatever violent treatment the police provide for them. There is nothing useful to learn about data evaluation from these reports, so I will ignore them for the rest of this note.I should state my bias: My personal (nonexpert) impression is that the shooting was unjustified and that the St. Louis County police response has been inappropriate. I have no insight into the motivation of anyone involved.However, if you look at the actual numbers from Ferguson, it is not clear to me that the conclusions of racial profiling, conclusions like the ones quoted above, that have appeared in every news source that I respect, are justified by the data.The focus of this blog is on the teaching of software engineering topics, primarily software testing and measurement (and thus too, statistical analysis).The data from Ferguson provide an interesting examp