Point by Fascinating Point

Very interesting bullet list of recent data and source articles relating to the decrease in gas consumption.

Gas purchases plummet

The most interesting stat, I think, is in the comments, where one reader reported that out-of-gas calls to AAA have doubled. There is a CNN story about it.

In case you’re starved for data, AAA also has a Daily Fuel Gauge Report, which tracks the retail price averages for gasoline.

In the last two years, the number of worldwide terrorist attacks have at least doubled. And obviously, along with that, the number of fatalities have also risen. The most dramatic jump, however, occurred after the Abu Ghraib torture photos were brought to light.

UPDATE (3/9/07): As brought up in other blogs, Abu Ghraib is not necessarily a causal event. Please note that there were many other issues that occurred at around the same time and after the Abu Ghraib scandal that also impact these figures, such as a ramping up of military action, call to action from certain terrorist leaders, rising sectarian violence and deadlier (read: more efficient and effective) suicide bombings.

Of the H5N1 avian flu cases reported to and verified by WHO, the number of cases for people younger than 30 years of age is disproportionately higher than those of older age groups. However, mortality rates are especially high among the 10–19 age group. WHO gathered these statistics beginning in November 2003 — when the first cases came to light — until just this past November 2006.

In light of recent news stories regarding the possible drug-interaction death of Anna Nicole Smith and her son, here are some statistics related to this.

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) result in hundreds of deaths a year in the U.S. Whether these are reactions are from allergies, existing conditions, over-the-counter interactions or multiple drug interactions, is not quite known. And data for 2005 and 2006 is not yet available to help fill in the picture.

To celebrate Barry Bonds’ breaking of Babe Ruth’s home run record, I’ve slapped together a little graph to compare Barry’s homers with the times he’s been at bat, to the times he’s been intentionally walked. How these factors are related and how they trend together is interesting to see.

The fewer times he’s appeared at the plate the fewer times he’s hit homers. This is incredibly obvious, but I just wanted to see.

I also put in the number of times he’s been intentionally walked because I wanted to see whether it was affecting the number of homers he hits. This seemed to vary from year to year and didn’t show a clear causal relationship, though I would guess that it had its effects regardless.

Now, how did the steroid investigation affect his home run production? Compare with the Balco timeline on USAToday. However, keep in mind the other factors that contribute to fewer homers.