Geographers from Kansas State University have created a map of the spatial distribution of the Seven Deadly Sins across the United States. How? By mapping demographic data related to each of the Sins:
- Greed: Average incomes versus total inhabitants below the poverty line
- Envy: Total number of thefts (robbery, burglary, larceny, and stolen cars)
- Wrath: Total number of violent crimes (murder, assault and rape) per capita
- Lust: Sexually transmitted diseases per capita
- Gluttony: Number of fast-foot restaurants per capita
- Sloth: Expenditures on arts, entertainment and recreation versus rate of employment
- Pride: An average of the six other sins
The calculation for Pride seems a bit unimaginative to me: they justify it as Pride being the root of all sins (really?) but perhaps something like press releases issued per capita, or expenditure on sports teams might have been more interesting. Here are the maps for Wrath and Gluttony (click to enlarge):
You can see slideshows of all the other sins in the Las Vegas Sun article. The images above are clearly showing scaled data: I can't see those Gluttony clusters in Texas, Appalachia and the Carolina coast in the slideshow of the raw data. It would be interesting to know how the scaling was done, but I can't find any references to the "GiZScore" they appear to be using. Nonetheless, it's a great application linking geographic demographic data to what might normally be considered "unmeasurable" quantities.
Las Vegas Sun: One Nation, Seven Sins
The GiZScore is the Z-Score from the Gi* test for spatial clusters. The Gi* (aka the GI star, see Ord, J.K., and A. Getis. 1995. Local Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics: Distributional Issues and an Application. Geographical Analysis 27(4): 286-306) Z-Scores define clusters of neighbors with more in common to adjacent neighbors than less; a cluster map. In terms of statistical analysis, this means you neighbor has more in common than less, and so as the bandwidth (distance from one neighbor to the next) increases, the relationship decreases.
No metric is prefect if a human defines it, and that is the beauty of science.
Posted by: Mitchel Stimers | February 26, 2010 at 01:25