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Comment by f_allwein | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

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...

> 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!

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

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