IV. Miscellaneous

The final group of significant correlations did not fit into any definite category, but were perhaps the most compelling.  One such statistic was the average year built of buildings in the zip code (map 7), which had a coefficient of -0.497 (Table 5), valid at 99.9% confidence.  This seemingly irrelevant number is a good way of measuring the age of the neighborhood.  Additionally, in Pittsburgh’s case the older zip codes are located in the inner city, so this relationship shows the correlation between the geographic location in the center of the city and AIDS.  To go even further, this data shows that he center of the city is a more economically depressed area because there is not enough money to build new buildings.  Another piece of demographic data that correlates to high AIDS rates is median age, a good statistic for finding which zip codes have younger populations.  This correlation coefficient was -0.391 (Table 5), showing that the younger populations had higher AIDS rates.  While not as strong as some of the other correlations, this relationship is still valid at 99% confidence.  Although I could not find crime rate or STI data by zip code for Pittsburgh, the closest I could get was sex offender data data as a percent of the population.  By examining these numbers, I found that the Allegheny County Prison is located in zip code 15219, one of the areas to the east of Downtown along Route 376, and contributes to that zip code’s disproportionately high percent of sex offenders.  When the offenders in prison were removed from the data, the statistic still correlated with a coefficient of 0.461 (Table 5), which is significant at a 99.9% confidence level.

The final, and strongest, correlation was found between the percent of male male households (map 6), that is, households where the heads of household were both male and the AIDS rate.  The coefficient was 0.9 (Table 5), an extremely high number valid at 99.9% confidence.  This statistic is unusual because there are relatively low numbers of declared male male households in Pittsburgh, and so the fact that such a high correlation exists is quite impressive.  The area with the greatest number of declared male male households is zip code 15221, located to the west of Edgewood, and is not one known for its open gay community.  It is possible, therefore, that the declared male male households in these neighborhoods are an accurate representative of other, closeted homosexuals that live in the zip code.  This data could also suggest that perhaps Edgewood is not known for its gay community because while homosexuals live there, they are only openly gay in other areas, such as at gay bars or the bathhouse downtown.

Proceed to V. Anomalies

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