Very unconvincing.

-What is the predictive power? Precision and Specificity, confidence intervals?

“definitely lowers the chance a considerable amount”

Explain. How did you come to this conclusion? What are you even considering is “a considerable amount”?

Can you even currently calculate the correlation between your “danger score” and predicted crime?

You’re selling this app as safety, a mistake many apps and service solutions offer. But this app does not actual make people safer. You haven’t demonstrated this and it doesn’t look like you intend to. It looks like you don’t care if this app actual makes people safer - just worried about the “market” and the download rate. Which is sorta okay…..(because anyone relying purely on an app to be safe is insane in the first place)

You’re right, this app isnt for me, and idk who it’s for. I wish you luck in hopes that this improves and that you really rethink your strategy. Nevertheless, making an app is a big task - so congrats on getting this far.

Okay, but HOW MUCH predictive power?

“Some predictive value” is no different from “almost no predictive value at all”

Can this app accurately predict whether or not someone will have an incident on any given path? Of course not, bc if the data was that granular the police would just intervene and prevent the crime from happening in the first place - and of course, this is ridiculous.

The amount of data you would need to prove that simply does not exist.

And if you think simply saying “many studies” is convincing, then you are sorely mistaken. Aren’t you trying to promote this app? Are you really seeking to make people safer or is this just a cash grab, profiting off of some people’s innate fears?

Brilliant points all around.

As you pointed out, this app completely hides the fact that the vast overwhelming majority of walking trips happen without any incident. Therefore, any incidents reported appear more like noise in the full-context of the data, rendering the predictive power of the model useless, and consequently rendering this app obsolete at the start.

Using such flawed data and yet professing to have “the safest route possible” is disingenuous and potentially dangerous.

Unless you have data to back up your claims, no user should believe that the route they are being shown is actually the safest - potentially lulling users into a false sense of safety or inflated danger.

On top of this, the app tries to pass along something like “Safety” as if it is an objective measurement that we all agree on - but in reality, your subjective opinion (the scoring of your models) is making all of these choices for us.

Therefore you’ve really just made an app that is optimally useful for only the creator - and even then, it’s theres no indication that the route is indeed to safest.

One change you could make is by showing the under-hood of the model. For each route, show the safety score alongside the probability (and confidence intervals) of experiencing violent crime along each route (with huge asterisks) based on time traveled, size of walking party, gender, height-weight, and time of travel.

I’m willing to bet that the difference in score/probability/confidence level between the “best route” and the “more dangerous routes” are absolutely minimal - potentially making many serious distinctions you’re making from safe/unsafe useless.

I like the overall purpose of the idea, you would just need so much more data that does not yet exists for me to believe this app will work as intended at all.

Perhaps if we started collecting daily walking data for a few thousand baltimoreans across the city for like a few years, and then tracked their walking routes with the crimes they experienced, then maybe this app might work as intended.

Chicken Biryani