There are just over 2,000 DRIs in the entire US, 46 of which are women. Alabama is leading the list with >300 inmates per 10M inhabitants.
There are just over 2,000 DRIs in the entire US, 46 of which are women. Alabama is leading the list with >300 inmates per 10M inhabitants.
Why per 10 million?
Because it makes the numerator whole numbers for all data for easy comparisons by human minds. Comparing 300 to 5 is easier for people than comparing 30 to 0.5. It’s the same reason machinists use inches per minute over inches per second. It’s so values are between 1 and 600 and not between 0.0176 and 10. It’s easier to reason about whole numbers than decimals.
I guess this is a US cultural thing. I grew up in a metric country and decimals are much easier for me to compare than fractions.
Who said anything about fractions? Whole numbers are easier than decimals and fractions.
And no, this isn’t just a US thing. I’m certain your country uses things like “parts per million”.
In metric countries, parts-per notation is common but it’s normally per million, billion, trillion, etc. Parts per 10 million is not common. Using an uncommon parts-per notation makes it difficult to compare between countries for instance as it’s unlikely that other countries are reporting in parts per 10 million.
The imperial measurement system uses fractions, 3/4 inch, etc. The metric system uses decimals, 19mm, etc.
So to represent this data in a metric country you would use per million inhabitants and use 2 significant figures. Decimals are easy for people who grew up in metric countries to understand.
I moved to Canada which used a lot of imperial measurements for building materials and tools (it’s a weird mix). I find the imperial system confusing with its use of fractions but I know lots of people that grew up with this system prefer it.
That’s why I think this globally uncommon per 10 million inhabitants might feel normal for Americans.
It’s not about being normal. This data is for scientists. The denomination was a deliberate choice given the various sizes of the data. It might be as low as single digits in some cases.
We use decimals all the time. We’re not dumb. But when making direct comparisons of values, it’s a simple fact that comparing 5 to 20 is easier than comparing 0.05 to 0.2. This is a scientific fact. It’s easier for your brain to parse. You can’t deny that. Go ask a psychologist. In addition, the data is cleaner. It’s easier to print “5” than “0.05”, and then you mention the denominator under the graph or table of data.
Every engineer and scientist in the US uses metric, and it doesn’t matter what the average person uses. Proper home cooks find bread recipes with metric weights for ingredients, for example. Woodworkers use feet and inches. People who use the Imperial system are just people using what they know. It’s entirely moot to this conversation. I don’t know why you keep bringing up fractions and the Imperial system as if that adds any weight to your argument about the actual topic at hand. The topic being scientists using a deliberate unit of measure to make it easy to print values and compare them at a glance.
I’m not suggesting this at all. I’m arguing that using “parts per 10 million” makes more sense to an American audience because fractions are more common in America. So using non common denominators is easier for an American audience. Whereas in metric countries, using standard denominators like thousand, million, billion, etc with decimals and significant figures is easier to interpret.
Sure, but you’re ignoring the additional cognitive load of using non common denominators. And losing the ability to easily compare these metrics with others.
Imperial measurements are commonly used in construction & civil engineering in the US.
I mean, you can choose any denominator, as long as you’re using the same one to compare statistics
Sure but using a non standard denominator makes off more difficult to compare to other metrics.
Sorry, what is the “standard denominator” for comparing executions?
Powers of a thousand; per thousand, per million, per billion, etc
Considering this is US, at least they’re not using football fields
x inmates per football stadium, where 1 football stadium equals 43,583 persons.
Right? Alabama doesn’t even have 10 million people.
100k seems ubiquitous, but I guess they use 1M for state numbers. 10M truly is silly. My only guess is that most other states are around <10/10M and they wanted something to compare that even a politician could understand.
Fair enough, thought of converting it to 100k but was too lazy lol