Whole Brain Post

In my sociology class, one activity was to search for crime rates in Spokane. We were trying to determine what areas in Spokane have higher crime rates and what crimes were the most prevalent in these areas. We used the data to figure out that Spokane has extremely high rates of property crime, but really low homicides. This activity mainly focused on the left-brain, as we only had to look at numbers and determine the areas with high crime rates. In order to make this activity focus on both areas of the brain, we would have to think about why the crimes in Spokane are centralized and are typically non-violent. We could have been looking at why areas have higher crime rates, such as demographic, poverty, etc. Also, we could have tried to think of solutions to high crime areas which are typically the result of social structures, poverty, and demographics. Another area we could have looked at that involves more right-brain thinking is why Spokane has high property crimes, but fairly low homicide. While we typically use both sides of our brains in Sociology, this activity was geared towards more left-brain thinking which is required for data analysis. However, sociologists often delve deeper than the analysis of data and also look at social structures and the interactions between individuals as well as groups. Most sociologists stay away from using solely data that relies on numbers, and use observations as well as social trends to evaluate certain situations in society.