Modeling Numbers

When nothing makes sense, we can play with the data we have

by Madeline Vega

I just saw a meme telling everyone to stop being sheep because, if eight states don’t have lockdown orders, then the rest of the country is obviously stupid. Nevermind that one of those states needs people in processing plants and now that state is 12th in the country for infections per capita. The other seven have some of the smallest populations per square mile. I couldn’t help but comment. I feel slightly more authoritative on calling out stupid shit about masks than I do about other problems in society.

My social media feeds are also full of posts about how San Francisco is doing so much better than New York and how Florida doesn’t want any New Yorkers within its borders. While I stopped watching press conferences a while ago, it is an ever present question: How likely am I to catch this? Why do I know more people who have gotten into car accidents after the re-opening than I do people who were seriously ill with COVID-19? Has the rest of the country learned from the mess in the Northeast compared to the stay-at-home orders in the West or are they simply distanced properly to begin with?

Madeline Strum Photography

Biggest Cities by Population

Comparing the density of four of the most populated cities in America to San Francisco and Florida’s five biggest cities

Go to the desktop version to see the captions matched up with the models

THINGS IT’S NOT AS EASY TO DIAGRAM

How much more likely my family or I am to get sick from visiting the beach this summer than we were in past summers

Falling down the rabbit hole of @RateMySkypeRoom

Police violence against minorities

The reach of Bayer CropScience*

What will happen when the one person whose Twitter account should be suspended decides to treat social media like publishers

My relief that this spread doesn’t look like complete garbage

*Bayer bought Monsanto, so now Bayer CropScience receives huge tax breaks to grow genetically modified soy beans in Puerto Rico, which could really use some help out of debt. Seed companies control like a third of the land, so Puerto Rico has to import most of its food rather than growing it. If you visit cropscience.bayer. com, the company has its eye on “smallholder farms” around the world to address food insecurity. Bayer CropScience wants to help in every way it can during the current crisis... And then I see a doctor saying too much seed oil in patients’ diets is causing the inflamation that’s landing people in hospital beds these past three months and the host says maybe drug companies want people to eating too much seed oil. The conspiracies!