The New York Times article How Much Worse the Coronavirus Could Get, in Charts by Nicholas Kristof and Stuart A. Thompson (3/13/2020) has a great interactive set of graphs that illustrate the importance of flattening the curve. The graphs start with the one copied here. What’s at stake in this …
Read More »How has child mortality changed?
The article in Nature, Mapping 123 million neonatal, infant, and child deaths between 2000 and 2017, by Burstein et. el (10/16/2019), provides a detailed analysis of under 5 child mortality (U5mr). The goal of mortality-reduction efforts is ultimately to prevent premature deaths, and not just to reduce mortality rates. Across …
Read More »What has improved (and not) between rich and poor countries?
The St. Louis Fed post, Healthier Countries, if Not Wealthier Countries by Guillaume Vandenbroucke (12/26/2019) notes The income gap between rich and poor countries doesn’t seem to be closing. In fact, it seems to be getting wider. However, the gaps between these groups of countries when it comes to health …
Read More »How is U.S. life expectancy changing?
The Economist’s daily chart Why are Americans’ lives getting shorter? (11/27/19) provides the graphic copied here. After climbing gradually over the past half century, life expectancy in America reached a plateau in 2010 and then fell for three consecutive years from 2015 to 2017, the latest for which data are …
Read More »What is the leading cause of child mortality?
The article by Our World in Data, Pneumonia – no child should die from a disease we can prevent, by Bernadeta Dadonaite (11/12/19) reports: Every 39 seconds a child dies from pneumonia. 5.4 million children under five years old died in 2017. Pneumonia was the cause of death of one-in-seven …
Read More »How do food systems differ between rich and poor countries?
The World Bank post The high price of healthy food and the low price of unhealthy food by Derke Headey and Harold Alderman (7/23/19) explores the connection between food systems and wealth in a country, along with the impacts. For example, their graph here show a correlation between stunting in …
Read More »What 5 states had the highest mortality rates?
The CDC data brief, Mortality Patterns Between Five States with Highest Death Rates and Five States with Lowest Death Rates: United States, 2017 by Jiaquan Xu, M.D. (9/5/2019), provides the graph here of death rates by age (pay attention to the log scale on the x-axis). The five states with …
Read More »Can a simulation help us understand the value of vaccinations?
This animated video by Robert Rhode demonstrates the idea of herd immunity. In short, if enough people in a population are vaccinated then that can protect those that can’t get vaccinated due to say age or illness. This can be used in a probability or QL course.
Read More »Is there a country where women smoke more than men?
The Our World in Data page Smoking by max Roser and Hannah Ritchie has 19 graph, with data, related to smoking. In general, men smoke more than women except in Nauru (see graph copied here). Every 5th adult in the world smokes tobacco. But there are large differences between men and …
Read More »Where do we buy our food?
How you answer the question of where do you buy your food probably says a lot about your socioeconomic status. The chart here is from the Business Insider article Here’s where Americans are buying their groceries by Hayley Peterson (6/21/17). Note that CVS, Walgreens, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General each …
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