This data visualization is a world cloud. To create it we used press releases that were sent to news seven from various towns across the state, and then put them into wordle. The most frequently used words are the largest and the smallest ones are the least used words.
As you can see DUI is a very frequently used word. The majority of press releases the station receives are about DUIs. One can also assume that theft is a common crime considering it's fairly large size. Twenty three and twenty two are also pretty prevalent words, though I am am not sure what context they were used in. It could be that people between the ages of 22-23 commit the most crimes in this area. St. Johnsbury, Bristol, Brattleborro and Lyndonville are all towns with large representation in the word cloud. This could mean that the towns report a lot of crimes, that they just send out more press releases, or that people often are brought their after the crime. For example St. Johnsbury and Brattleborro both have barracks that are often used to hold drunk drivers until they sober up. The last large word is unknown. Unknown is a very common word in press release. A motive can be unknown, a person can be unknown, and a million other little details can be unknown.
The word cloud is a actually a fairly useful data visualization tool. You can gain a lot of understanding from them. What you can't get from them is facts. There are statistics, so it wouldn't be useful if you were trying to determine exactly how many crimes happen in Brattleboro or how many people between the ages of 20 and 24 receive DUIs. It is very aesthetically pleasing though, which is an added bonus if your are using it on a blog or in a story, it catches the readers eye and therefor draws interest to what you are saying.
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