Does Myrtle Beach really deserve the nickname "Murder Beach"

How many times have you seen a post by a friend or media outlet sharing a "Top 15 Dangerous Cities in..."?   I know I've seen my share, and every time, I look to see where the city I'm living in is on the list.  If you aren't aware, I live in Myrtle Beach, SC, and it has been determined to be the #1 most dangerous/per capita city in South Carolina.  This bugs me because, it's a tourist town, and the crime rates are calculated using the population of the city they are referring to.  This is not far to Myrtle Beach, or any other Tourist town, and there is by far, way more people in the city at any given time than the population stats.

Myrtle Beach may seem like a really large city to some people, but did you know that the actually population of year round residence is under 30,000 people? That's crazy to think about, especially when you're on vacation and see the craziness.   The Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce  estimate that more than 13 Million people visit the area each year (http://www.myrtlebeachareachamber.com/research/docs/20statabstract.pdf) .   So at any given time, there could be 1 million people in town, especially during prime time of summer.

If we look at Horry County as a whole, there are almost 300,000 people living in the area.  I believe to get a true Crime Rate, you need to include Horry County.  When you do this, you get a Crime Rate that is below the National Average, which means that Myrtle Beach is NOT the most dangerous city in South Carolina.

We can look at a single number all day long and it won't tell us anything, other than we can compare Myrtle Beach to the National Average, or other Cities, but that isn't really going to tell us anything.  This is why I took some historical data from the FBI's Crime Stat's and put them in a Tableau Dashboard. Now, we can see the Crime Rate over time, and add a trend line, now it tells a story.

We can now see that for the most part, even without taking into consideration population, the Crime Rate is on a down ward trend for all recorded crimes.  This is great news, in looking at a single number you think "Oh my, that's high", but now, when you see where it was, and now it's dropped, it now means that things are getting better, and not worse.  And because it's getting better, and crime is on a downward trend, I don't believe that Myrtle Beach deserves the nickname Murder Beach.

I love living in Myrtle Beach, the crowds, traffic and all.  I feel safe, and with any city, you avoid the area's where the trouble is, and no matter where you live, there are areas that you avoid right?

Thanks for your time!

Until next time,


Todd

An Open Letter to a former friend

Hey Ya'll!

Normally, this space is for me to write about some new dashboard that I put together, but today, it's a little more personal. Yesterday we had my son's 10th birthday party and we spent the day with some family at the water park (I have some video here: http://youtu.be/0FUwzOsNk80).  Anyway, I digress, I recent read a post that a friend shared of an "Open Letter to my ex-friend" or something.  It kind of hit me that I have had a few people that have left my life, and one in particular that I wanted to say something to.  Since I will most likely never speak to them anytime soon, and probably never again, I wrote a letter to him.

Dear former friend, 

    First, I’ll admit it, I miss you. I miss taking off on a Wednesday afternoon to go do something just because it was your half day off of work.  I miss late nights drinking beer talking about whatever it was we talked about.  I miss the way things used to be.  Most of all I miss our family.  I enjoyed being part of your family, before I was really a part of it, you know before I married into it.   I was there for all the major holiday’s and even the less major ones.   I enjoyed my time with my real family, but couldn’t wait to get to my ‘other’ family.  I think I spent more time with you and your family than my real family.  That’s what I really miss, is our family. 

    You and the family moved, but we made the trip to see you.  Do you remember what you did for the first couple of years when we would arrive?  You would leave work, to come pick me up and take me to the beach.  You would tell me how much you enjoyed being close to the beach and that it never gets old, and I would tell you that I grew up vacationing on the beach and I enjoyed it, but I didn’t have to be there all the time.  It was our little argument.  Our trips to visit was special, because we were bringing the family back together, and it was like old times.  We may have walked away from some of our childish ways, but we still could have a good time. 

     It was after a few years of being away when things changed.  I don’t know exactly what it was, or when, but you and I started to talk less often, and when we would make the trip down, you didn’t drop everything to come and get me.  I had to come see you at your work, so you could tell all the boys “This is my brother-in-law that I told you about.”  They would ask me about stories that you told them, and I would correct the parts that you embellished. This was fun for a while, but this too changed. It started to feel like I was a bother when I would stop in, you know you were too busy, or whatever, it wasn’t the same.  I didn’t feel welcome anymore.  The conversation started to seem forced, so I stopped coming in.
     

     The thing that bothered the most was, I, and my family were not important enough for you to take time away from your job.  It was always about me taking time off to come visit, but only one time did you come back “home” to visit us.  And do you remember what happened?  You sat around worried about your work.  Always on the phone with them.  You sat in my house as said “I should have just flown in, had everyone meet me at the airport, and then went back home.” this was the trip you made to meet your nephew for the first time, and it was a burden on you to be back “home”.  This is when I realized you had really changed.  You see, I was in denial that people could, or did change until I dropped you and your family off at the airport, 6 hours before your flight.  You would rather hang out in the airport, than spend any time with your family.  I’m sure you don’t remember that I in fact took vacation time off work for your visit, but that’s what I do, not what you do.

      That’s what makes us different I guess.  I don’t just say I enjoy and love my family, I show it.  It’s easy to take pictures and post them on social media, and say how much you love your family, but it’s another to actually do it.  I think this is where I really started to have a problem.  You would talk to me on social media, and make like we were still cool.  But then when I come to your house, you barely speak to me.  Do you remember Christmas a couple years ago?  We drove 12 hours to spend Christmas with our family.  We show up and your house, and you hardly even speak to us.  You would talk to me and my wife, you sister-in-law, through our son, your nephew.  The best part of that day, and I will never forget it for as long as I live.  We all sat down to eat dinner at your dining room table, and what do you do?   You make a plate, and walk your happy ass back into the living room, flop down on the couch to eat and watch TV.  Your wife says “Why don’t you come and eat with your family?” to which I said “I don’t want to put him out, he doesn’t need to eat in here just because of us”.  You did come in, sat across the table from me, scarfed down your food and went back to the couch.  Merry F’in Christmas right?  I say F you!  That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  I had enough.  It was the last time I ever went to your house, and one of the last times we were ever even in the same room together.   Do you remember the last time you even seen me? 

      I do, it was just a couple months ago, we had moved south to Myrtle Beach.  We are only about 2 hours away now, so we came for a visit to see our family.  Your wife was working a car show, we stopped in to hang out for a bit, and wound up getting roped into participating.  It wasn’t what I really wanted to do, but I did it.  Why?  For my family, you see it’s what family does.  We help each other, when we can, and this was something that I could do.  I sacrificed my time, to sit in a parking lot and hang out.  You show up, and wouldn’t even look at me, or my wife.  Your wife said “Aren’t you going to say hi to your family” and as you walked away, with your back to us, threw up a hand like “hi”, then got in your car and left.  Well, F you buddy, if I wasn’t done before, I’m done now. 

     What did I do that you are so angry at me that you can’t even look at me?  Was it because I made comments about guitars, or Mustangs or whatever?  That’s who I am.  I like to have fun, and most of it was just doing what Mustang and Camaro guys do, give each other crap about their cars.  But you didn’t take any of it as a joke at all.  I’m sure you remember the last thing I actually said to you don’t you?  You had posted a comment about a Fender guitar being the best guitar in the world, or something.  It was your opinion.  I made a comment, sharing my opinion, and get attacked.  You never said anything to me, but you got your wife all riled up to talk to my wife.  Your guitar teacher attacked me in a private message.  I was the bad guy for saying anything to you.  You see for me, it was like if my opinion doesn’t match yours, then I am wrong and attacking you. 

     It was at this point of my being attacked that I unfriended you and your family on social media.  I had to do this, so I wouldn’t be tempted to comment, or say anything to be taken out of context as I didn’t want to offend anyone.  In my mind, it was better this way, at least for a while.    It wasn’t too long after, I came back and friended your wife and daughter.  This is my family, and I wasn’t going to let one person keep us all apart.  I feel that this is your goal though, you want to keep your family to yourself, and you push everyone else away. 

     I guess I should have seen it coming.  I was in your life for 10 years, and I saw people come and go.  I saw how your other friends who had moved away, came back to visit you, but you never went to visit them. I saw close friends of yours just stop coming by.  I couldn’t understand why they slowly disappeared until now, as it has happened to me.  I look back at everything and see how I was phased out, like everyone else in your life.   You don’t need me anymore, you have a new friend.  

     The thing that bugs me, because you are my brother-in-law, people still ask how you’re doing.  I used to say “oh you, know, he’s good”, but I really didn’t know.  It bugs me that I actually saw it coming, but there was nothing that I could do about it.  Like they say, you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink.  I make myself available, but I can’t make you speak to me.   

     All this comes down to one thing.  The golden rule, treat others the way you want to be treated.  Well, I read you loud and clear.  I have done that.  You don’t speak to me, I don’t speak to you, and you know what that does?  It makes me look like an asshole, but I don’t really care, because I’m tired of trying.  I’m tired of acting like a crazy ex-boyfriend that can’t stop stalking his ex-girlfriend.  Yes, I was like that, asking what you’re doing, driving by to see if you were at work, contemplating going in to say hey.   Hell, I even said I would still speak to you if I see you out, but the last time I seen you, and you wouldn’t even look at me, that idea went straight out the window.  I’m certainly not going out of my way to speak to you, but if you speak to me, I will certainly speak to you, and I will be cordial and polite.   

     You know, there’s something that I’ve wanted to say to you for a while, after my dad died.  I learned a lesson watching him die.  You see, it was always about work for him.  He thought that he was taking care of his family by working himself to death.  He would bring his work problems home with him, and basically, he never left work, even when he was home.  I see you doing this, in that you are the first one in, and the last to leave. The guys are always calling you.  You are worried about hitting and exceeding your goals so you get your bonus.  I know money is important, and you need it to take care of your family, but you need to let that shit go, and spend time with your family. Having all the money in the world means nothing if you can’t enjoy it.  It’s a delicate balancing act where you work to support your family, and relax and enjoy your family.  You can’t enjoy them when you’re dead, and they certainly don’t want to watch you die from working yourself to death.   

     Good luck to you, my former friend.  I wish things could be the way they were, but unfortunately, that won’t happen. You see, things are different now.  We are different people because of this.  You see it’s true, people do change.  We are always learning from our mistakes and our accomplishments.  I don’t regret anything from past, as I learned a lot about who I am.  I’m still the same fun guy, that you could never tell if I was drunk or not, but I don’t drink anymore.  I have cleaned up my life of all those bad habits, and I concentrate of my family.  Its family first for me, and I feel good about it.  I enjoy my spending time with my wife and my son.  I feel like I have it all now, but the only thing that I could ever ask for, was more time with our family. 

Stay out of the Ocean, sharks live there

Hey Ya'll!

It's summer time, it's almost 4th of July and Shark Week is starting in a couple days.  It doesn't get much better than that does it?  I actually could get better, because if you've been paying attention, in the past few weeks, there has been a lot of news coverage of some recent shark attacks.  These attacks hit pretty close to home, literally, as most of these attacks have occurred in our back yard, just up the coast in North Carolina.  As of today, July 2, 2015, there have been 7 separate shark attacks, which seems like a lot, and it got me thinking.  How many is normal?

I cruised the interwebs for a little bit and came across some data maintained by the Shark Research Institute, which documents all reported shark attacks world wide.  This is what I was looking for.  I pulled the data off the website for U.S. only, removed all the data prior to January 2000 (it seemed excessive to go back that far), and build a dashboard around it. Now, all that data is easy to understand.  We can quickly determine which state has the most attacks by the colored maps, and we can see the trend over time (as long as you have more than one year selected).

In looking at all the data at a National level, from 2000 to 20014, there is a bit of an upward trend in Shark attacks, but if we take a closer look.

Zooming into a smaller date range, like the last 4 years (2010 - 2014), we see a huge shark attacks are really going up Nationally.   Why?  You got me, I'm just a Data Artist, not an oceanographer :-)

It is really interesting to change the filters, and see the numbers for the various states.  What I really thought was funny was there is one shark attack reported in Kentucky in 2006.  I couldn't imagine how anyone could have been attacked in Kentucky, until I clicked to read the details.  It was at the Newport Aquarium, imagine that.

So, what did I learn?  Something that I always new and that I love sharks!  I love Shark Week!  I also learned that you don't have to be in the ocean to get attacked by a shark.  This means, I'll continue to respect the sharks and stay out of their house, and won't be touching any sharks at the aquarium.

I hope you enjoy my dashboard, and I'll work on updating the data periodically.

Todd

Last one to leave Ohio, turn out the lights

    Living in Myrtle Beach, SC, is pretty cool for a Native Ohioan.  I spent 38 of my  44 years living there.  Five and a half of those I was living in Wiesbaden Germany, and Newport News, VA while in the Air Force, and the last eight months, we've been living in Myrtle Beach.  The more time I spend in Myrtle Beach, the more Ohio license plates I see and the more I wonder "Is anyone left in Ohio?"

   One of the cool things about Ohio is they have a county sticker on their plates, where each of the 88 counties is assigned a number.   Because they are numbers, it's hard to know where people are from, so being a Data Artist, I thought I'd make it a "family game" to keep track of  the county numbers, and at the same time, without being too scientific, create a viz to see where the most people in Ohio are coming from, at least the one's that we see.

   The method behind the madness is simple.  If we are out and about, and we see an Ohio plate, we note the county number, then we update the data.  Cars can, and probably will be counted twice, because we're not keeping track of license plate numbers, the kind of car or anything like that, even though that might provide some interesting information, like what's the most popular car that people from Ohio drive on vacation...maybe version 2, but for now, it's simply counting how many times we see a county sticker, to see which county has the most visitors.

   For you Ohioan's, we know you love to vacation in the south (because we did too), and Myrtle Beach is a pretty popular spot, so the last one out, please, turn off the lights :-)

Note:  Myrtle Beach is the general descriptor of the area that will be included in this non-scientific study.  As we travel around the Grand Strand area which includes, and is not limited to Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Garden City, Surfside, Georgetown, Murrells Inlet and Little River to name a few.

Myrtle Beach Harley Spring Bike week vs BikeFest/Black Bike Week Police Stats

First off, it's been a long time since I've written here on my blog.  I had such high hopes of myself being more involved in blogging about Tableau, but I just couldn't find anything that really interested me, until today.

Being that I have recently moved to Myrtle Beach, it's interesting finding out about things that you don't know about when you're just here for a week or two on vacation.  One of those things Harley Davidson Spring Bike week and BikeFest aka Black Bike Week.  Both of these event happen in May, with Harley Bike week occurring first, and BikeFest happening over Memorial Day weekend.  We knew about the Harley Bike week as I like to get Harley Davidson T-shirts from the cities I've visited, and I have a Bike Week shirt from a couple years ago.  We found out about BikeFest from my uncle, who's a former policeman in North Carolina.  When we told him we were moving to Myrtle Beach, he was like stay away from BikeFest because it's dangerous, and from looking up the news on it from last year he was right.  I mean there were 8 shootings, and 3 people were killed.  That's some scary news to read about as you're planning a move.   Now after we get here, and get settled in, it's all we've heard about since January. Local news is always sharing what's going on for Memorial Day weekend, and the City had a plan in place to try and prevent events like last year from happen.

With both events being over, local police are sharing data  regarding both event.  I think this is mostly because people try to compare and contrast the two events, saying Harley Week is less violent than BikeFest, and those sort of things.  Being a VizWiz, data guy, I look to the data to tell me what goes on.  I mean, I feel like I'm a pretty open minded guy, and I like motorcycles, so I want to have an unbiased view of the data, which event gets in trouble more.  Is it the Harley guys, or is it the sport bikers of BikeFest?

Today, North Myrtle Beach PD, released their data on both events.  At first glance, I was like "WTH is this telling me?  It made no real sense to me, as it was just a jumble of lines, in two separate graphs. My immediate response was "I have to put this in Tableau"

North Myrtle Beach PD Stats for both Bike weeks

Along with these graphs, they provided a data table, which if you look at it, it shows there were more arrests during Harley week than BikeFest, this doesn't take into account that Harley week is longer.  There is more opportunity for someone to get arrested.

North Myrtle Beach PD data table 

This made me say even more, I need to know more details.  This looks like Harley week could be more dangerous than BikeFest, could the public be wrong?  So I transferred the data to a nicely formatted Excel "database", and I calculated the number of data for each event, and came up with a Average Per Day Count for both events.

What does using an Average per Day tell us?  I feel like it gives us a better picture of what's going on over time.  Harley week is around 6 days, and BikeFest is 3-4 days.  There's more time for you to get busted for something during Harley Week, right?  So I built my dashboard around this Avg Per day, by Category (Arrests, Tickets, Warning, Traffic Accidents, M/C (Motorcycle) accidents) for both events, and through in a trend line, so we can see is it getting better or worse?

Below, I have my completed dashboard (after the break), which if you use Tableau, this took a shot time to put together, but you get big results.  We can quickly see, side by side how each category compares between events.  The good news is, in number of Arrests, both events are trending down, but per day average, there are more Arrests during BikeFest than Harley week.

Screen shot of Arrests by Event

Overall, it does appear that incidents are trending downward, but with BikeFest being shorter, the data shows it's the rowdier group.  But that could be because the median age of the BikeFest attending is most likely younger.  It would be nice to get a little more detail behind the data.  I would love to get a break down, by day, age, the offense, and all those little details.  I could build something really cool with that, hint hint wink wink North Myrtle and Myrtle Beach PD :-).

I hope to have Myrtle Beach data soon, so check back, as I will update the dashboard, to get even more insight into both events.

I hope you like my viz!

Thanks for reading!!

Todd

Who's up for some golf

   Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is our home and if it wasn't already a cool place being the self proclaimed "Golf Capital of the World" (read the Golf Channels idea of the Golf capital of the US here) would make it even cooler right?  That is if you're a golfer, and unfortunately were not golfers.  

   But, not only are they like 90+ golf courses, there are a bunch, and I mean a bunch of mini/adventure golf courses around here and who doesn't like to play mini golf?  I have a 9yr old son, so you know we're playing mini golf every chance we get.  

  In a quick Google and Bing map search I was able to find at least 20 mini golf courses in Myrtle Beach, and that's not including North Mrytle, and to the south in Surfside and Murrells Inlet.  I must say the mini course to square mile ratio has to be some kind of record, and you could probably call Myrtle Beach the Mini Golf capital of the world too.

  With so many mini-golf course around, we thought it would be cool to keep our scorecard and pencils from each of the courses that we played in a scrap book.  I thought to myself, a scrap book is cool, and since Tableau can map things, I think it might be cool to put together a little dashboard where can update on the map which courses we've played.  

  Sounds easy right?  I mean how hard can mapping our mini golf course be right?  Technically it's not, but there isn't like a master list of all the mini golf courses around, so I had to gather the data (names, addresses, etc) manually, which again isn't a big deal, just a little more time consuming than I'd liked, but I got it.  At least I got a good portion of the courses documented.  I even went as far as to geocode each of the address, and include the latitude and longitude in my data, overkill right?  probably, but since I was manually adding the address, I thought I might as well geocode them.  I've been using GPS Visulizer for sometime now, actually use it less since I have Tableau, but I does serve a purpose.  You can do all sorts of things with maps on this site,  but I digress, I'm writing about Mini Golf.

  Now that I have my data in Excel, I can build a dashboard. This was the easy part.  Drop in my latitude and longitude, but in a cool golf ball on a tee shape, and color them to represent Green as played and Red as not played, but it was missing something, I couldn't just leave it as a map, I needed to add something else.  So I added in a little beachy imaginary, and called it a day.  

   It serves our purposes for our own personal tracking, and as time goes on, the list will grow, and one day there will be a master list of Mini golf courses not only in Myrtle Beach, but in the Grand Strand :-)

Check out my viz after the break.

Thanks,

Todd

Lets look at insurance claims

Hey there!  It's been a little while since my last blog, but I've been busy moving to Myrtle Beach, SC. We've been here for a couple of weeks, and we're getting settled in.  I took a week off work during our first week here, and things are starting to get back to normal with my going back to work..well going back to work when you work at home just means getting up earlier, and doing work work.

Since I've moved to Myrtle Beach, I wanted to join a Tableau User Group (TUG), as before I left Ohio, the Columbus TUG has an Iron Viz Competition that I missed, but was really interested in participating in, so I looked and there weren't any close, so I've started a new Myrtle Beach TUG and now seeing members to join.  If you're in the area and want to join me, the Group page is here:  http://community.tableausoftware.com/groups/myrtle-beach

Anyway, one of my first dashboards I posted on my Tableau Public site was an Claims dashboard. At the time I wasn't writing blogs, and it's gotten like 20 hits (most of them are probably me), so I thought I'd talk about it a little bit, since I haven't had a lot of time to create something new (I have some ideas for new viz's).

In my day job, in working with insurance, we handle claims for our clients.  For the privacy, those clients have been changed, but this viz breaks down the claims to many different views from one of our Servicing Centers down to a by state, and by client view.  The map is my favorite piece of this as it really gives you that visualization of where the claims are.

I think this is a pretty straight forward dashboard, in that there really isn't anything tricky going on.  There are a couple Dashboard Actions that allow you to filter based on the State or the Cause of loss, and 3 quick filters to allow you to get down to a finer level of detail.   My Operations folks like the tooltip, as it keeps the viz simple and clean, but with a quick hover, they can get more details.

The real world version of this is much larger (many more pages, and views, with over 12 million records), resides on our Tableau server and is updated every morning with the previous days work.  It's very beneficial to our Operations  team as they can quickly see how they are doing.

I hope you find this viz interesting, and I hope to have something fun in the near future.

Until next time,

Todd

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