factoid of the day

[forgotten_aria]

A more detailed list:

http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm

Comments

[gorgo.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's a really cool graphic. My intuition is that the circles don't add up to 100%, or anywhere near it. Do you know what they used to select the causes that would be highlighted?

[nacht_musik]

This is a major example of the "long tail" effect. Quite possibly the vast majority of causes of death are individually quite rare.

[gorgo.livejournal.com]

True. Given the source, I was also wondering if maybe they selected which causes to include based on how often they get questions about each cause, as opposed to frequency of death.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

The numbers in the article might give you some insight, but yes, there is clearly some information missing from this diagram.

[crs.livejournal.com]

I'm just amused that as an artifact of placement, "Drowning" looks smaller than "Motorcycle accident" and "Bicycling accident" looks smaller than "Air/space accident"... the optical illusion makes their choice of spiral a little meaningless.

Also, overlapping circles in general, when they should be summed.

Unless the size of the intersection of "motor vehicle accident" and "stroke" is actually the set of people who were killed in a stroke-related motor vehicle accident.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

I think they're trying to use position and size simultaneously, the more central the more likely.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Pretty! Thanks for sharing!

[testing4l.livejournal.com]

Pfft. Maybe for you sissies. Me? I'm uploading my personality into an AI just as soon as I can!

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

And then, against your will, someone will port you to vista and you'll be in your own personal hell. >:)

[testing4l.livejournal.com]

Ouch! You're an evil woman just for thinking that! That's kicking an AI in its metaphorical nuts.

Have I mentioned how much I miss the good ol' days of puzzle pirates? ; )

[honeyartichoke.livejournal.com]

Judging by the probabilities - this is a mix of age groups - averaged over lifetime. So it's a bit meaningless to apply these numbers to any individual person at any one point in time. I'd be curious to see something like this stratified by age. Clearly in our age group (at least forgotten-aria and me) the heart disease, cancer and stroke will be a much smaller fraction compared to, say, MVA or suicide or some others.

[honeyartichoke.livejournal.com]

i shouldn't have said "probabilities", but you know what i mean