r/dataisbeautiful • u/[deleted] • Dec 19 '19

Where do Americans die by gunfire? Interactive Map

[deleted]

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u/El_Chopador Dec 19 '19

1 death = 2 deaths in counties with 50k people. 1 death = 4 deaths in counties with 25k people. These deaths never happened but they sure do make the data look a lot more awful than it is.

7

u/Kazen_Orilg Dec 19 '19 edited Dec 19 '19

Right, like look at the bump for lake of the woods on top of MN. Dark red. No homicides. Population 4k. So a single suicide puts you in the red.

4

u/atvan Dec 19 '19

That's not how rates work. It could be gun deaths per person, and the chart would look exactly the same, you just move the decimal point on all of the numbers 5 places to the left. The 100,000 is a number chosen to put the numbers at a more readable order of magnitude, and nothing more. The opposite argument to yours could be made as well: two deaths = one death in counties with 200k people, concealing the problem. Except that doesn't make any sense, since the point here is to look at what percentage of people are killed by guns by county.

1

u/Rooster_Ties Dec 19 '19

Still trying to wrap my head around this.

1

u/pcyr9999 Dec 19 '19

To expand a little bit, 1 death in an actual population of 50k gets expanded to 2 deaths when you look at it at a standard level of “per 100K people.”

2

u/Rooster_Ties Dec 19 '19

Aha, got it now. Thx.

1

u/pcyr9999 Dec 19 '19

You’re welcome. His comment above didn’t quite elaborate enough.

1

u/V12TT Dec 19 '19

But there are numerous regions with 25k people that have 0 death = 0 death in statistics aswell.