The Biggest Hazard to Americans [Chart Review]
The information drawn from this visualization doesn’t come too easily. There are two distinct sets of data shown within this map. First is the actual map, which could be considered a heat map. The shading of the different regions represents the Standardized Mortality Ratios. The second set of data is the pie charts located in the ten different regions, which shows the proportional hazard mortality categories.
[via Yahoo]
After studying the map, I can conclude that regions III and V have the highest mortality due to heat/drought. Is it me or does that seem a little odd because the regions aren’t too hot? Not really that shocking is that the Northeast that has the highest mortality due to winter weather. Out West, the highest mortality comes from severe weather. The rest of the pie chart data is pretty evenly mixed.
When asked about the biggest threats to life, the article states:
“According to our results, the answer is heat,” Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of the University of South Carolina wrote in their report, which gathered data from 1970 to 2004.”
I don’t know what data they were looking at because I’m not sure I can make that same conclusion based on this map. Also, who made up the categories? Should tornados fall under severe weather? Or maybe severe weather has lightning within the category. Nope, lightning is a category by itself. Can someone please tell me what Geophysical is and how it relates to mortality? They don’t make much sense.
Regarding the standard deviations, how many people (reading Yahoo) do you think can decipher this data? Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of Standardized Mortality Ratios (SMRs). Basically, it’s the ration of deaths to expected deaths.
- If the number is 1.0, then the expected number equals the actual number
- Less than a number of 1.0 and the actual deaths are less than expected
- Higher than 1.0, the actual deaths are greater than expected
Referencing the map with this information, section VIII has significantly more deaths than would have been expected. On the other hand, California and the Northeast have significantly less deaths than would be expected. It seems like the color scheme and ranges should be different. I would expect two sets of numbers above and below the number 1.0, which can be easily identified with a better color. Or, maybe black is the right color being that we are talking about death.
In summary, I think there is some potential here and with a few tweaks this data visualization could be more effective.
Is this an effective way to show this data?
Do you think the categories make sense?
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