{"id":62465,"date":"2014-12-28T15:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T20:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62465"},"modified":"2014-12-26T12:56:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T17:56:39","slug":"how-to-lie-with-statistics-stand-your-ground-and-gun-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/12\/28\/how-to-lie-with-statistics-stand-your-ground-and-gun-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Lie with Statistics: Stand Your Ground and Gun Deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2\"<\/a>At Junk Charts<\/a>, Kaiser Fung drew my attention to a graph released by Reuters. \u00a0It is so deeply misleading that I loathe to expose your eyeballs to it. \u00a0So, I offer you this:<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a>The original figure is on the left. \u00a0It counts the number of gun deaths in Florida. \u00a0A line rises, bounces a little, reaches a 2nd highest peak labeled “2005, Florida enacted its ‘Stand Your Ground’ law,” and falls precipitously.<\/p>\n

What do you see?<\/p>\n

Most people see a huge<\/em> fall-off in the number of gun deaths after Stand Your Ground was passed. \u00a0But that’s not what the graph shows. \u00a0A quick look at the vertical axis reveals that the gun deaths are counted from top (0) to bottom (800). \u00a0The highest peaks are the fewest gun deaths and the lowest ones are the most. \u00a0A rise in the line, in other words, reveals a reduction in gun deaths. \u00a0The graph on the right — flipped both horizontally and vertically — is more intuitive to most: a rising line reflects a rise in the number of gun deaths and a dropping a drop.<\/p>\n

The proper conclusion, then, is that gun deaths skyrocketed<\/em> after Stand Your Ground was enacted.<\/p>\n

This example is a great reminder that we bring our own assumptions to our reading of any illustration of data. \u00a0The original graph may have broken convention, making the intuitive read of the image incorrect, but the data is, presumably, sound. \u00a0It’s our responsibility<\/em>, then,\u00a0to always do our due diligence in absorbing information. \u00a0The alternative is to be duped.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Junk Charts, Kaiser Fung drew my attention to a graph released by Reuters. \u00a0It is so deeply misleading that I loathe to expose your eyeballs to it. \u00a0So, I offer you this: The original figure is on the left. \u00a0It counts the number of gun deaths in Florida. \u00a0A line rises, bounces a little, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[233,2104,274,250,133],"class_list":["post-62465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death","tag-knowledgeintelligence","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-guns","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1-2-Copy9.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62465"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65553,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62465\/revisions\/65553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}