• kersploosh@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    The choice of regions feels cherry-picked to inflate the blue area on the map. Why else would they include Mongolia, or include only the least-dense regions of the US and Russia while excluding the major population centers?

    While South Africa certainly has a lot of murders, both absolute and per capita, this map could easily be draw with a lot less blue on it.

    • Sophocles@infosec.pub
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      2 days ago

      For real, they picked the most barren places on earth (except Europe). Most of the land mass of Canada, Australia, and Greenland are deserted. Midwest US is all farmland. No one lives in Siberia

      • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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        2 days ago

        Yes, but just having pretty much all of Europe is a lot of people. So not as cherry picked as many maps that cherry pick.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 days ago

      Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s the whole point. I’m guessing they could pick one or two Central American or other African countries and get the same balance.

      Also, picking on SA specifically smacks of the whole apartheid hangover thing that’s going on.

    • Like, comparing it to China or India?

      Comparing absolute numbers in a statistic like this is particularly egregious. At least make it per-capita. May as well compare the number of murders per year in the continental US to the number of murders per year in the entire polar regions. Shock, horror, American so violent!

      • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        For example, using absolute numbers from Wikipedia…
        South Africa: 27,272
        Haiti + Philippines + Ecuador: 28,509

        That map would look very different.

        You’re right that using absolute numbers in the first place is bad practice.

  • Sophocles@infosec.pub
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    2 days ago

    BREAKING: the entire moon has less crime than South Africa! That’s 38 million sq km of no crime!
    /s

    • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      South Africa has ~64 million people

      Which is less than… Britain (~69 million)

      Which is less area on the displayed map than the red section.

  • potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish
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    1 day ago

    the map has tons of unpopulated area, barely any metro area, and the blue is still 5000 murders less than SA. at least balance it a bit better ✌️