Point by Fascinating Point

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.

A graph showing increasing use of employer-sponsored health and wellness programs. This was based on a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, on behalf of Principal Financial Group, which has come out with the Principal Financial Well-Being Index for the past three years.

There’s nothing like a front page infographic that simply stuns. It’s one thing to say it, and another thing to show it in a compelling way. So, while trolling the internet, I came upon this wonderful front page for the UK’s The Independent. Regardless of your politics, on a design level, it’s just wonderful.

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.

I was planning on posting an article with statistics on illegal immigration and its impact on the U.S. economy, but searching around I found that the only substantive data was derived from polls of peoples’ feelings and attitudes about illegal immigration, such as this one poll conducted in 2004 by NPR and the Kennedy School at Harvard.

This is probably obvious, but there cannot be substative data because of the nature of the issue. Because illegal immigrants are forced to hide or obscure themselves, it makes sense that we aren’t able gather much reliable data. So, how much an average illegal immigrant makes, where they spend that money, what exact jobs they are working in, etc. is impossible to tease out.

However, there is some interesting corollary data, such as this graph from the New York Times from April 15, 2006 showing that illegal immigration probably does not affect a states’ median wage for less educated workers:

Also, it is interesting to note that for this particular issue, there seems to be an abundance of completely fabricated statistics. This opinion piece in the LA Times addresses point for point some of the false or misleading statistics that are bandied about.