The chart here is from the National Center for Health Statistics paper Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2020 by Donna L. Hoyert (2/23/2022). A definition: A maternal death is defined by the World Health Organization as, “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of …
Read More »What is the relationship between the sun and climate change?
The climate.gov article Climate Change: Incoming Sunlight by Rebecca Lindsey (9/1/2009 – an oldie but a goodie) gives a comprehensive overview of what we know about the energy from the Sun. A few highlights from an article worth reading: A comprehensive review of published scientific research by the Intergovernmental Panel …
Read More »How can ocean temperature profiles connect to calculus?
Exploring Our Fluid Earth has some educational materials for science. For example, the page Compare-Contrast-Connect: Seasonal Variation in Ocean Temperature Vertical Profiles includes the graph copied here. Some of these graph have inflection points which relate (I think) to thermoclines (transition between warmer surface water and colder deep water). There …
Read More »How hot was May 2022?
From NOAA’s May 200 Global Climate Report: The May global surface temperature was 1.39°F (0.77°C) above the 20th-century average of 58.6°F (14.8°C). This ranks as the ninth-warmest May in the 143-year record, 0.30°F (0.17°C) cooler than the warmest May months (2016 and 2020). It was the coolest May since 2013, …
Read More »What are Earth Minute Videos?
NASA has a number of whiteboard animations called Earth Minute Videos: NASA isn’t all about interplanetary exploration; in fact, the agency spends much of its time studying our home planet. This fun whiteboard animation series explains Earth science to the science-curious. The videos themselves don’t have much math but each …
Read More »How much do we trust our government?
Pew has a feature, Public Trust in Government: 1958-2022 (6/6/2022), with three interactive graphs answering this question. In general, When the National Election Study began asking about trust in government in 1958, about three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of …
Read More »Which regions use the most AC?
From the eia article Nearly 90% of U.S. household used air conditioning in 2020 by Ross Beall and Bill McNary (5/31/2022): In 2020, the Midwest Census Region and South Census Region had the highest percentages of households using AC, at 92% and 93%, respectively. The lowest percentage of households using …
Read More »Have we passed peak agricultural land?
The chart here is from the Our World in Data article After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’ by Hannah Ritchie (5/30/2022). Interestingly Despite this reduction in agricultural land, the world has continued to produce more food. This is true of both crops and livestock.5 …
Read More »Is there a relationship between homicide and race?
One more post from the Manhattan Institute’s* Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike by Christos A. Makridis and Robert VerBruggen (5/18/2022). We first note: Homicides went up throughout the country, and for every major demographic group, in 2020, but they did not rise for everyone equally, as is clear when …
Read More »Is there a correlation between Homicide rate and voting?
The Manhattan Institute* has a lengthy report on the increasing homicide rate, Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike by Christos A. Makridis and Robert VerBruggen (5/18/2022), with numerous interesting charts. From the report (figure 7 copied here): Next, we explore the correlation between two geographic factors—population and GOP vote share—and …
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