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Comment by wtbob | Hacker News Reader

I thought it was interesting that according to their numbers the U.S. has fewer homicides than Germany (which is worse than Syria?!). That's quite surprising.

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The graphs are a bit confusing. higher = better, actually (there is a small bit saying "safe levels/ unsafe levels" above the 1st graph). I was also confused why Saudia Arabia would have such high issues with alcohol, whereas in fact it is Russia that does...

I did not mention the higher = better. I was wondering how can Russia be so great at handling unsafe drinking!

I'd say they're more than a little confusing. Why would anybody from a western cultural background choose yellowish orange for "better" and a range of blues for "worse"?

Heatmaps are pretty common in western culture.

Heatmaps are used with continuous data. This map has 4 discrete values, so it's really misleading.

> Good performer: War (fatalities per 100k population): Germany 100

What does that mean?

Those graphs are very misleading. They rank countries from the first (left) to the last (right) for each indicator. Some indicators are such that left is better (hygiene), other are left is worse (war fatalities).

That 100 means that Germany is the 100th on war fatalities. But not! To add confusion to confusion, the number is the position of the USA on the scale. So it's the USA to be at position 100. Germany appears to be in the upper 90s.

Edit: they mislead me too. Check mnc's reply.

I am afraid they misled you too.

There is no ranking. 0 is "unsafe level" while 100 is "safe level".

Yup, they did!

Germany is 100. The US is 100. France weirdly is listed as 22.

That's target 16.1.2, listed as War, shown here: http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2065481409/206635003...

That makes much more sense!

The graphics are completely messed up in my opinion, I was trying to make sense of them exactly because of that (Germany having the worst place in "Fatalities per 100k pop." in War? Saudi Arabia drinking like crazy?) and I have a background in Statistics...

It feels wrong. The US is remarkably violent. UNODC says the rate of homicide in the US is 3.9 per 100,000, and for Germany is 0.9 per 100,000 people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

I think Bloomberg took numbers from here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

> Performance of the health-related SDG index, MDG index, and non-MDG index, and 33 individual health-related indicators, by country, 2015

> Countries are ranked by their health-related SDG index from highest to lowest. Indicators have been scaled from 0 to 100. Definitions of health-related SDG indicators are shown in table 1. SDG=Sustainable Development Goal. MDG=Millennium Development Goal. MMR=maternal mortality ratio. SBA=skilled birth attendance. Mort=mortality. NN mort=neonatal mortality. NTDs=neglected tropical diseases. NCDs=non-communicable diseases. FP need met, mod=family planning need met, modern contraception. Adol=adolescent. UHC=universal health coverage. Air poll mort=mortality attributable to air pollution. WaSH=water, sanitation, and hygiene. IPV=intimate partner violence. HH air poll=household air pollution. Occ risk burden=burden attributable to occupational risks. PM2·5=fine particulate matter smaller than 2·5 μm.

They put that into a chart here: http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2065481409/206635003...

In that chart US is labled as 42, and Germany is labled as 81. I suspect Bloomberg made an error.

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