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April 11, 2005
Suicide Countries
o I was reading a story on a Japanese news website about Japan's suicide rate, where they claimed that the WHO website (World Health Organization) now ranked Japan as having the 10th highest by country in the world.
Knowing how statistics lie, I went to the WHO website and came upon this chart of suicide rates per 100,000 by country and sex.
Just one little problem. None of the following countries are listed:
- North Korea
- Iraq
- Saudi Arabia
- Lybia
- Lebanon
- Yemen
- United Arab Emirates
- Somalia
- Sudan
- Nigeria
- Rwanda
But the following are listed. Here are the male/famale rates per 100,000 with the last year information was collected. (Japan is listed as 35.2/13.4 2000):
- Egypt 0.1/0.0 1987
- Iran 0.3/0.1 1991
- Jordan 0.0/0.0 1979
- Syria 0.2/0.0 1985
Hmmm...Why do I think there's something funny in these numbers? And the idea that Japan ranks number 10 in the world?
*** I have questions for all your answers.
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Posted by witnit at April 11, 2005 2:36 PM
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