Not quite sure what your point is here, 1 suicide in a population of 300 is a suicide rate of 1/300 and 3 suicides in a population of 900 is still a rate of 1/300, etc. We were talking about suicide _rates_, not raw numbers, and as I said, densely populated areas have lower suicide rates than the less densely populated ones, generally speaking. The phenomenon is undisputed among social scientists, though they do argue over the causes.
This isn't to say that there aren't regional and cultural variations, though, so that for example the map shows that a region in the central midwest and another one in the central south have higher suicide rates almost irrespective of population density. If your point with the numbers is the same as Donne's that "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...", then I am entirely with you on that. The rural/urban divide is a recent phenomenon (historically speaking), by the way. Prior to the 70s, rural and urban suicide rates were approximately equal, but since then they have greatly increased in rural areas while mostly holding steady in urban areas. You might have been trying to make another point with your example, that if a population of 300 has an underlying suicide rate of 1/3000, then you would only expect one suicide every 10 years on average, but the year that a suicide occurs the measured rate is 10 times greater than it really is. This kind of measurement error is accounted for in the map data. If you want, I can explain the ways I see (I am not a demographer and this is really offtopic), but suffice it to say that demographers know about this kind of measurement error and how to account for it. On May 1, 2010, at 6:39 PM, COMPUTERGUYS-L automatic digest system wrote: > From: "Rev. Stewart Marshall" <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: illegal search warrant? > > Actually I was half right. > > Note the fine print of the map: > > Based on death data from 2000 through 2006, this US map of the > smoothed, county-level, age-adjusted suicide rates indicate that > suicide rates are highest in the western and northwestern regions of > the United States. There is also a notable pattern of high suicide > rates among counties in the central areas of the midwest and southern > regions and in central Florida. > > > They may be lower in density but they are not the norm. The areas I > was most familiar with (upper midwest) showed a lower suicide rate. > > Also statistics can be misleading. > > 1 suicide in an area of 300 is 1/300 of the population but it is > still one. 10 suicides in a area of 10,000 is 1/1,000. Not as large > a statistical number but it is in reality over 3 times as many suicides. > > I have dealt with the aftermath of suicide and it is never a fun > topic nor easy to explain. Many things go into it. > > Stewart > > > > At 10:09 PM 4/30/2010, you wrote: >> Actually, the holiday suicide idea is a media-perpetuated falsehood: >> <http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/suicide.asp> >> >> And I posted about this yesterday, but somehow the post didn't make >> it to the list: Stewart was wrong about suicide increasing >> with population density. It's exactly the opposite. Massachusetts, >> New York, New Jersey and DC are among the most densely >> populated states and have some of the lowest suicide rates, >> while Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana have some of the >> higher rates and are among the least densely populated. >> >> If you want to see it visually by county, look at the two maps here >> of the suicide rate and population density: >> >> <http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/suicide_map.html> >> <http://www.mapofusa.net/us-population-density-map.htm> >> >> You'll see a very good correspondence between low population >> density and high suicide rates or between high population density and >> low suicide rates. And it's not just the US, it seems to be a >> worldwide phenomenon: >> <http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10398&page=36> >> In China, the contrast between the rural and urban suicide >> rates is particularly extreme. > ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
