Sustainability Math A Quantitative Literacy and Mathematics Resource for Instructors

Kevin Drum provides an excellent example of quantitative reasoning in his (5/6/19) post How Can We Reduce Black Maternal Mortality? The story begins with his chart here that shows maternal mortality increasing in general, but it has increased faster and is much higher for Black mothers as compared to White. Drum begins by addressing the toxic stress hypothesis, in other words, the differences are do to the stress caused by societal and systemic racism which leads to physiological issues.  But,

One reason for this is the “Hispanic paradox”: Hispanics certainly encounter systemic racism too, but the maternal mortality rate for Hispanic mothers is about the same as for white mothers.

The article has a graph of “allostatic load” which looks to quantify long-term stress.

The differences in allostatic load are tiny—about the equivalent of one IQ point on an intelligence test—and Hispanics have a higher allostatic load than either blacks or whites but the lowest maternal mortality rate.

Another chart looks at self-reported stress by race for poor individuals, but

Poor blacks report less stress and higher levels of optimism than both poor whites and poor Hispanics. Put all this together and the toxic stress/weathering hypotheses look shaky. The racial differences are modest and don’t seem to correlate well with maternal mortality anyway. The problem is that every other hypothesis seems wrong too. Researchers have looked at poverty, education, drinking, smoking, and genetic causes. None of them appear to be the answer.

There are two more charts as part of Drum’s article. The article is worth reading, he cites his data, and is it perfect for a QL based course. His general conclusion at this point:

This is shocking: we still have almost no idea of what’s going on even though this has been a well-known problem for more than two decades.

Reporters without Borders releases a world press freedom index each year. The U.S. dropped three spots to 48 out of 180 countries and is considered a “problematic situation.”

The RSF Index, which evaluates the state of journalism in 180 countries and territories every year, shows that an intense climate of fear has been triggered — one that is prejudicial to a safe reporting environment. The hostility towards journalists expressed by political leaders in many countries has incited increasingly serious and frequent acts of violence that have fueled an unprecedented level of fear and danger for journalists.

“If the political debate slides surreptitiously or openly towards a civil war-style atmosphere, in which journalists are treated as scapegoats, then democracy is in great danger,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Halting this cycle of fear and intimidation is a matter of the utmost urgency for all people of good will who value the freedoms acquired in the course of history.”

The site includes the downloadable 2019 data, an interactive map, and the main article also has a couple of graphs.

Related post: Where does the U.S. rank on the world press freedom index?

Today’s post is a shameless plug. If you are looking to learn R as it relates to college courses consider my new book R for College Mathematics and Statistics. The book is example based and organized by mathematical and statistical topic, which loosely follows standard courses in the curriculum. The book is useful for both faculty and students with little or no experience in programming or R. Note also that I provide R code on the calculus and statistics pages and occasionally with posts.

The Census Bureau report States With High Opioid Prescribing Rates Have Higher Rates of Grandparents Responsible for Grandchildren by Lydia Anderson (4/22/19) draws a connection:

In the wake of the opioid epidemic that was declared a public health crisis in 2017, there has been increasing concern about what happens to the children of parents with substance abuse disorders who may be unable to care for their children.

New Census Bureau research shows that grandparents may sometimes step in to care for these children.

According to the report the states with the highest opioid prescription rates are Alabama (121 per 100 residents), Arkansas (114.6), Tennessee (107.5), Mississippi (105.6) and Louisiana (98.1). These states represent four of the top 5 states where the percentage of the population age 30 and over are raising grandchildren.  The article has a companion map to the map of opioid prescription rates copied here with rates of grandparents raising grandchildren.  There are also links to the data.

The Climate Central post Shifting Tornado Zones (4/24/19) provides a map of changes in the number of tornadoes since 1979 (copied here).

Let’s be clear, tornadoes are not going away in the Plains and Upper Midwest, but more have been recorded east of the Mississippi. While there are connections to climate variability modes like ENSO, these overall trends are consistent with an eastward shift in the drier climate zone of the western U.S. and with climate change projections indicating that severe storm environments will become more common in the eastern U.S.

The number of tornadoes in large tornado outbreaks is also on the rise.

In addition to the changing geography and number of tornadoes, there is a shift in the time of year they occur.

Extensive tornado data can be found at TornadoHistoryProject.com.  Related posts: When and where do tornadoes occur?  Are tornadoes on the rise in the U.S.?

According to Earth Overshoot Day:

Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. We maintain this deficit by liquidating stocks of ecological resources and accumulating waste, primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The graph here is from statista and is from data posted by Earth Overshoot Day.  The Earth Overshoot website has useful materials for teachers.

The Weather Channel article It’s the Year 2100 and Everyone’s Moving to Duluth by Neil Katz (4/16/19) notes

In a climate-changed future many people, says Keenan, “are looking for affordability, accessibility and actually qualitatively some degree of environmental amenities, which we believe Duluth, Lake Superior, and that part of northeast Minnesota, among other places may offer.”

Huttner is right to point out that winter weather in Duluth remains brutally cold, snowy and difficult. But it is changing, and it’s changing faster than many other places. Winters are now five degrees warmer than they were in 1970, according to NOAA data analyzed by Climate Central.

The Weather Channel isn’t the only one praising Duluth as a future place to live. The NYT article Want to Escape Global Warming? These Cities Promise Cool Relief by Kendra Pierre-Louis (4/15/19) lists Duluth and Buffalo as cities of the future (Note: Both articles quote Keenan, a lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Design). The Weather Channel article has a couple of nice charts (such as the one copied here) and both are a starting point for conversations about adapting to climate change.

PS On a personal note, I lived in the Twin Ports (Duluth MN and Superior WI) for a couple of years around 2000. Beautiful place.

This recent video (3/29/19) by Robert Rohde shows how temperature distributions have changed. Each year the graph is a distribution of temperature anomalies.  As noted “This essentially the same data that was previous shown as an animated map:”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JObGveVUz7k  The video here is useful in any statistics or QL course and the two videos together provide an illustration of how to display data. The data is from Berkeley Earth.

The melting season for Arctic Sea Ice has started with a quick drop in ice. The total ice is at a record low for this time of year (orange line in chart). But, how this plays out throughout the melting seasons is hard to predict based solely on past seasons. For instance, 2012 is the year of the record low (dashed line), but numerous seasons have been lower than 2012 at this time of year (2016 – yellow, 2015 – green, 2007 – blue shown here).  Arctic Sea Ice extent is updated daily on the Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph by NSIDC. This graph allows the user to select years, download the image, and choose between Arctic and Antarctic ice extent. NSIDC posts the data and there is a project on both the Calculus and Statistics page using this data, as well as an interactive graph.

Pew has an interactive graph on their Remittance flows worldwide in 2017 page where you can select a country and either outgoing or incoming. The result is get a map of how much money was sent to other countries or came into the country. For example, the graph here is for money sent from the U.S. to other countries. Along with the map, a table of data is updated to match the selection on the map.  A related Pew article, Immigrants sent a record amount of money home to sub-Saharan African countries in 2017 by Abby Budiman and Phillip Connor (4/3/19), highlights this data.

Money sent by immigrants to their home countries in sub-Saharan Africa reached a record $41 billion in 2017. This represents a 10% jump in remittances from the previous year, the largest annual growth for any world region, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of World Bank data.

Worldwide, immigrants sent a record $625 billion (in 2018 U.S. dollars) back to their home countries in 2017, a 7% increase from the previous year.