Happy new year

[Steve Rothstein]

Happy New Year to all my friends and anyone who still checks this newsgroup.

Steve Rothstein

[a425couple]

"Steve Rothstein" <stephan_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message ...

> Happy New Year to all my friends and anyone who still checks this
> newsgroup.
> Steve Rothstein

Yes. Happy New Year to Steve, and everybody else.
Keep safe out there my friend.

Are you currently both working and going to school?

[west]

Back atcha, I still lurk when I see activity.

[Steve Rothstein]

Yep, sort of. Working full time and writing my dissertation. No real
classes, but lots of research and writing.

Steve Rothstein

[a425couple]

"Steve Rothstein" <stephan_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message...
> a425couple wrote:
>> "Steve Rothstein" <stephan_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message ...
>>> Happy New Year to all my friends and anyone who still checks this
>>> newsgroup.
>>> Steve Rothstein
>>
>> Yes. Happy New Year to Steve, and everybody else.
>> Keep safe out there my friend.
>>
>> Are you currently both working and going to school?
>
> Yep, sort of. Working full time and writing my dissertation. No real
> classes, but lots of research and writing.

Care to tell about the dissertation subject?
Either here on newsgroup, or by private email?

[Steve Rothstein]

I am looking at proving that a significant number of false alarms are
actually not false. I had started by looking at the factors that affect
when a burglary occurs. We know from other research that things like the
distance to a school or bar or interstate highway affect the odds of
being burglarized and I wanted to see if it also affects when the
burglary occurs. Timing of crimes is not as well researched as what
affects if it occurs.

I ended up with all of the calls for police in San Antonio for three
years. When I checked if alarms affect burglaries, I found that the
false alarm calls come in in almost the exact same time patterns as the
real burglaries and real alarm calls. I thought about it and this
doesn't make sense if they are false alarms. The events causing false
alarms (mechanical malfunction, weather, etc.) should be random or
nearly so.

If there is a pattern that matches real burglaries, some significant
percentage must be real burglaries that the police are missing for some
reason. There are lots of possible reasons, such as not being able to
get to the rear or top of the building to check and not a completed
burglary with no forced entry (think door rattled but still locked as
burglar checks it).

After I do the literature review, I will show the patterns match for
some of the factors I can determine already. Then I am going to run some
test models with varying percentages of calls selected randomly and
selected from a pattern that matches real burglaries. This should give
me an estimate of how many are really human intervention and not true
false alarms.

Steve Rothstein

[Paul Cassel]

I've sometimes wondered about this myself - if false alarms are real but
the intrusion or attempted intrusion is undiscovered.

I had a neighbor who has one of these alarms which would go off
apparently on its own yet it only did so at night. I couldn't figure
what about dark would cause the thing to malfunction. The owner was a
large pawn broker in town so someone may have figured his house stored
shop valuables or other higher value items not in regular houses.

Since testing a window or a door to see if if was open would trigger the
alarm, I thought it possible that it was not a false alarm but rather
the alarm was doing its job well - preventing a break in.

-paul