Today in highly dubious statistics, the blog chart porn (which, by the way, exists) linked to charts of the United States showing the distribution of each of the Seven Deadly Sins: lust, envy, greed, gluttony, wrath, sloth, and pride. The charts originally ran in a Las Vegas Sun article in March but have been going viral these past few days with headlines like "Highest STD Rates: The Bible Belt." So there's one fun "fact" you've learned already.
Another fun fact-ish item: which state occupied by at least one Scanner is one of the country's most sinful, showing red on five of the seven charts?
Louisiana is in the red on the charts for lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and pride.
But what makes these charts seem so dubious is the arbitrary ways the stats were gathered. From chart porn,
Greed was calculated by comparing average incomes with the total number of inhabitants living beneath the poverty line. Envy was calculated using the total number of thefts - robbery, burglary, larceny and stolen cars. Wrath was calculated by comparing the total number of violent crimes - murder, assault and rape - reported to the FBI per capita. Lust was calculated by compiling the number of sexually transmitted diseases - HIV, AIDS, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea - reported per capita. Gluttony was calculated by counting the number of fast food restaurants per capita. Sloth was calculated by comparing expenditures on arts, entertainment and recreation with the rate of employment.
When we saw nearly the entire state of Louisiana was in the red for pride chart, we thought, surely they must be talking about LSU Tiger pride, in which case this chart is dead on. But pride was calculated by aggregating all of the other deadly sins. Huh?
Click here to see all of the charts.
Related:
Ask Scanner: Sexy Statistics