a) The population of the US rose from about 179 million people in 1960 to about 281 million people in 2000. Suppose you wanted to examine a time series to see if homicides had become an increasing problem over that time period. Would you simply plot the number of homicides versus time, or is there a better measure to plot against time? Explain.
b) Many statistics related to births, deaths, divorces, and so on across time are reported as rates per 100,000 of population rather than as actual numbers. Explain why those rates may be more meaningful as a measure of change across time than the actual numbers of those events.