Michael Maltz
Encyclopedia
Michael D. Maltz is an American electrical engineer, criminologist and Emeritus
Professor
at University of Illinois at Chicago
in criminal justice
, and adjunct professor and researcher at Ohio State University
.
, New York
on December 18, 1938. He attended Stuyvesant High School
in New York City
, graduating in 1955, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
, graduating with a degree in electrical engineering
in 1959. In 1963, Maltz earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering
from Stanford University
.
Maltz was a professor (1972-2002) at University of Illinois at Chicago
in criminal justice
and in Information and
Decision Sciences
, and is currently adjunct professor of sociology
and researcher at Ohio State University
. He was also the editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology from 1996 to 2000. In addition he was a Visiting Fellow for Research and Policy Studies at the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1995 to 2000.
In 1985 Maltz was awarded the prestgious Lanchester Prize by the Operations Research Society of America, recognizing his book Recidivism as that year's "best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English". This book also won the Leslie T. Wilkins Award for the Outstanding Book in the Fields of Criminology and Criminal Justice. In 1996 Maltz had a Fulbright Scholarship at El Colegio de Michoacán in Mexico.
and data visualization
to the field of criminology
. In addition to authoring books on recidivism
and crime mapping
, he has been a strong advocate of ensuring that inferences made from data are not attributable to biases in the data used, nor to the way they were collected, nor to the methods used to analyze them. This interest has surfaced most publicly in his critique of John Lott
’s More Guns, Less Crime
(see "A Note on the Use of County-Level Crime Data" and "Measurement and Other Errors in County-Level UCR Data: A reply to Lott and Whitley" below) based primarily on a detailed analysis of the validity of the Uniform Crime Reports
data set that Lott used to draw his conclusions. A further critique, of the way Lott responded to his analysis, was contained in a blog entry.
He led an effort to clean the FBI-collected Uniform Crime Reports crime data, which is available in a zip file on the web from the Historical Violence Database, housed at Ohio State University.
A particularly lucid explanation of the pitfalls of improper use of statistics
in social science (and, in particular, criminology
) is contained in his article "Deviating from the Mean: The Declining Significance of Significance".
Articles and book chapters, a selection:
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...
Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
at University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...
in criminal justice
Criminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
, and adjunct professor and researcher at Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
.
Biography
Michael Maltz was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
on December 18, 1938. He attended Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School , commonly referred to as Stuy , is a New York City public high school that specializes in mathematics and science. The school opened in 1904 on Manhattan's East Side and moved to a new building in Battery Park City in 1992. Stuyvesant is noted for its strong academic...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, graduating in 1955, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...
, graduating with a degree in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
in 1959. In 1963, Maltz earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
.
Maltz was a professor (1972-2002) at University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...
in criminal justice
Criminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
and in Information and
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
Decision Sciences
Decision theory
Decision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision...
, and is currently adjunct professor of sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and researcher at Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
. He was also the editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology from 1996 to 2000. In addition he was a Visiting Fellow for Research and Policy Studies at the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1995 to 2000.
In 1985 Maltz was awarded the prestgious Lanchester Prize by the Operations Research Society of America, recognizing his book Recidivism as that year's "best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English". This book also won the Leslie T. Wilkins Award for the Outstanding Book in the Fields of Criminology and Criminal Justice. In 1996 Maltz had a Fulbright Scholarship at El Colegio de Michoacán in Mexico.
Work
Michael Maltz' research focuses on the application of operations researchOperations research
Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...
and data visualization
Data visualization
Data visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, meaning "information that has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information"....
to the field of criminology
Criminology
Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society...
. In addition to authoring books on recidivism
Recidivism
Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior...
and crime mapping
Crime mapping
Crime mapping is used by analysts in law enforcement agencies to map, visualize, and analyze crime incident patterns. It is a key component of crime analysis and the CompStat policing strategy...
, he has been a strong advocate of ensuring that inferences made from data are not attributable to biases in the data used, nor to the way they were collected, nor to the methods used to analyze them. This interest has surfaced most publicly in his critique of John Lott
John Lott
John Richard Lott Jr. is an American academic and political commentator. He has previously held research positions at academic institutions including the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, College Park,...
’s More Guns, Less Crime
More Guns, Less Crime
More Guns, Less Crime is a book by John Lott that says violent crime rates go down when states pass "shall issue" concealed carry laws. He presents the results of his statistical analysis of crime data for every county in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994...
(see "A Note on the Use of County-Level Crime Data" and "Measurement and Other Errors in County-Level UCR Data: A reply to Lott and Whitley" below) based primarily on a detailed analysis of the validity of the Uniform Crime Reports
Uniform Crime Reports
The Uniform Crime Reports are published by the United States Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting Program...
data set that Lott used to draw his conclusions. A further critique, of the way Lott responded to his analysis, was contained in a blog entry.
He led an effort to clean the FBI-collected Uniform Crime Reports crime data, which is available in a zip file on the web from the Historical Violence Database, housed at Ohio State University.
A particularly lucid explanation of the pitfalls of improper use of statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
in social science (and, in particular, criminology
Criminology
Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society...
) is contained in his article "Deviating from the Mean: The Declining Significance of Significance".
Publications
Maltz has published numerous books and articles on techniques for making valid and useful inferences from data. Books, a selection:- 1984. Recidivism. Orlando, Florida: Academic Press, Inc.
- 1991 Mapping Crime in Its Community Setting: Event Geography Analysis. With Andrew C. Gordon and Warren Friedman. New York : Springer-Verlag Inc.
Articles and book chapters, a selection:
- 1994. "Deviating from the Mean: The Declining Significance of Significance". In: Journal of research in crime and delinquency, Vol. 31 No. 4, November 1994 434-463.
- 1996. "POWER TO THE PEOPLE: Crime Mapping and Information Sharing in the Chicago Police Department". Paper with Marc Buslik.
- 1999. "Bridging Gaps in Police Crime Data". Report published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- 1999. "Displaying Violent Crime Trends Using Estimates from the National Crime Victimization Survey" With Marianne Zawitz. Published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- 2000. "Crime and Justice". With Arnold Barnett and Jonathan Caulkins. In: Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Saul I. Gass and Carl M. Harris (Editor). Springer.
- 2002. "A Note on the Use of County-Level UCR Data". With Joseph Targonski. In: Journal of Quantitatiûe Criminology, Vol. 18, No. 3, September 2002.
- 2006. “Some p-baked thoughts (p > 0.5) on experiments and statistical significance.” Journal of Experimental Criminology, 1, 2, 211-226.
- 2009. “Waves, particles, and crime,” in Putting Crime in Its Place:Units of Analysis in Geographic Criminology, W. Bernasco, G. Bruinsma, and D. Weisburd, Eds., Springer-Verlag.
- 2009. “Look before you analyze: Visualizing data in criminal justice,” in the Handbook of Quantitative Criminology, A. Piquero and D. Weisburd, Eds., Springer-Verlag.
- 2011. “Homicide rates in the Old West” (with Randolph Roth and Douglas L. Eckberg), Western Historical Quarterly, 42, 2.
External links
- Michael Maltz’s homepage at UIC.
- Criminal Justice Research Center at The Ohio State University.
- El Colegio de Michoacán
- Journal of Quantitative Criminology