Analyzing Real Traffic Stop Data for Racial Bias

Abstract

This student-authored paper describes our—four high school students’—statistical investigation with a sample of 5000 traffic stops from our city. In addition to sharing our analysis to show that Black drivers were disproportionately stopped, we seek to highlight the possibilities that analysis of large datasets open up about talking about race and racism, especially institutional racism. We share this work to inspire teachers to engage their students in developing their critical statistical literacy through investigating real-world data.