Provisor-Lemery 1

Isabel Provisor-Lemery
Jason Fudge
Pre-AP Algebra II
14 September 2018

Mass Public Shootings In the United States

Today gun control is a topic that is very controversial, with the many recent mass

public shootings, people ask why nothing has changed? Why does it keep happening?

On one side of the debate people argue for gun rights, stating that it is their second

amendment. On the other side people urge for stricter gun laws, and more safety

precautions, to try and prevent more deaths. The controversy surrounding this issue as

well as wanting to educate myself and others on the issue of gun control, motivated me

to research this specific topic. Before doing my research I expected to find a weak

positive correlation, with a linear regression. This is because recently mass public

shootings have been happening more often resulting in more people dead and

wounded, which would show the positive correlation, with a linear regression. But the

amount of wounded and dead can widely vary from year to year which would also make

it a weak correlation.

What I first did was find data on how many people were killed and wounded from

a mass public shooting, since 1982. Then I plotted the data,

then running three different regressions, to find what would

be the best to show the data. The first regression I found

was with the linear equation of ( y1~mx+b) which had an r^2

of 0.3312. Then I found the next regression with the

quadratic equation of (y1~ax1^2+bx+c) which had an r^2 of

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0.498. For the third regression I used the exponential equation of (y1~a*b^x1+k) which

had an r^2 of 0.02931.

Through the data I collected , and running the three different lines of regression, I

found that the best line of regression was the linear equation, because it was the one

out of the three with the r^2 equaling closest to 1, and followed the data, the best out of

the three. After finding data and running three different regression equations with it, I

believe my conjecture was accurate, because I found a weak positive correlation, with a

linear regression. This model could be predicting the future if nothing is done to combat

the issue of mass public shootings in the United States, but if more is done the model

could have potential to look different in the next 32 years.

Through this data one can infer that although the numbers vary from year to

year, they create a weak positive correlation, with a linear regression. Which means that

mass public shootings have not gotten better but worse throughout the years, leaving

more people dead, wounded, and psychologically damaged. This again raises the

question of, why it has been a problem for so long but nothing has been done? People

of all races, backgrounds, ages, genders, conservative or not, all have been affected by

these mass public shootings. Now people are living in fear, not knowing when the next

shooting will come, and if it will be them or someone they love that goes next. Students

now go to school with bulletproof backpacks for protection, and worry about dying when

they should be more concerned with learning. Overall this data presents a public issue

that concerns many if not everyone living in the United States, by showing that not

much is being done to prevent these mass public shootings, with the graph creating a
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positive linear regression. With this data I hope people make can form an opinion of

their own on the issue of mass public shootings and advocate for what they believe is

right.
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Work Cited

Berkowitz, Bonnie, Denis Lu, and Chris Alcantara. The terrible numbers that grow with

every mass shooting. ​Washington Post​, December 14, 2012,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-amer

ica/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a60c159e9ba7​.

Dubenko, Anna. Right and Left react to the Gun Control Debate After the Florida

Shooting. ​New York Times,​ Feb. 15, 2018,

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/us/politics/right-and-left-react-to-the-gun-co

ntrol-debate-after-the-florida-shooting.html​.

Lopez, German. Mass shootings since Sandy Hook. ​Vox​, 2018,

https://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-america-sandy-hook-gun-violence​.

Wilson, Chris. 34 Years of Mass Shootings in One Chart. ​Times​, June 14, 2016,

http://time.com/4368615/orlando-mass-shootings-chart/​.

Wilson, Chris. 35 Years of Mass Shootings in One Chart. ​Times​, October, 2, 2017,

http://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/​.
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Graphic:

Link: ​https://create.piktochart.com/output/32460434-regression-project

Also shown below

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