Stat of the day: 85% of natural disaster-related deaths occur in Asia

This is fascinating. Snippet below, read in full here.

85% of all natural disaster-related fatalities occur in Asia, according to the World Health Organization. And starting tomorrow, representatives from 13 countries will meet in Vietnam to address the widespread occurrence of disaster-related fatalities in Asia and how to better prepare for them in the future. With Afghanistan's 5.3 earthquake last this week, the 5.2 earthquake in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan today, and Pakistan's ongoing flood crisis, the meeting in Vietnam is utterly timely.

Thanks to my home-away-from-home, Fast Company, for this article.

Statistic of the day: Venezuela is more violent than Iraq

This certainly shocked me to see. From today's NYTimes:

In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.

Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives.

Where can we point for blame? (duh)

Venezuela is struggling with a decade-long surge in homicides, with about 118,541 since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that compiles figures based on police files. (The government has stopped publicly releasing its own detailed homicide statistics, but has not disputed the group’s numbers, and news reports citing unreleased government figures suggest human rights groups may actually be undercounting murders).

There have been 43,792 homicides in Venezuela since 2007, according to the violence observatory, compared with about 28,000 deaths from drug-related violence in Mexico since that country’s assault on cartels began in late 2006.

Got the blues on this rainy day? This will NOT help

From The Economist: Bankruptcies are steadily climbing. Sign of the apocalypse or that second dip?

Total yearly executions by country

From the Economist:

CHINA executes more of its own citizens than any other country, and more than all others in the world combined. “Thousands” of Chinese were executed in 2009 according to Amnesty International's annual study, which states that an exact number is impossible to determine because information on the death penalty is regarded as a state secret.

Is the iPad Buzzworthy? See what Twitter has to say.

Yesterday's announcements from Apple were nothing short of buzz-worthy. While I have not checked out the product it is interesting to see how one social network's traffic (or conversations) has really picked it up. According to an article in the NYT's Technology section Twitter peaked at around 2200 mentions a minute yesterday around the iPad.

What Countries Are the Most Passionate About Music?

New Study Ranks States By How Happy Their Residents Are

Let me start here: this study is bulls**t.

Here are the top 10:

1 Louisiana
2 Hawaii
3 Florida
4 Tennessee
5 Arizona
6 Mississippi
7 Montana
8 South Carolina
9 Alabama
10 Maine

How can the number 1 happiest state be the one that was just crushed by a massive hurricane? With thousands of residents living in abject poverty, who did they survey down there? And don't even get me started on the rest of that list.

By the way, the bottom three (DC was included in the rankings):

49. New Jersey
50. Connecticut
51. New York

So the tri-state area gets crushed. New Yorkers can be blunt (euphemism), New Jersey did spawn things like the Jersey Shore and there really isn't much to speak about it CT, but really? Dead last?

To see the full list and read the study, click here.

The New Jersey Nets have started the season 0-12...where does this stand in the world of dismal streaks in the NBA?

Well...

In terms of 'worst start to a season', they're not quite there yet.

In 1988 the Miami Heat went 0-17 to kick things off and finished 9-73 (which is tied for the worst record for a single season)

In 1999 the Clippers also started the season 0-17. However, this was the strike-shortened season so they ended up 9-41. That's a better finish than the '88 Heat, but a much larger % of total games lost to start the season.

As I mentioned above, the '88 Heat tied for the worst season record with the '73 76ers. So...we'll just have to see where this season goes for the Nets.

Lastly, here is a look at some gross single-season losing streaks from the history of the NBA (single-season so we can compare them with today's Nets):

'96 Grizzlies - 23 games
'98 Nuggets - 23 games
'73 76ers - 20 games
'94 Mavericks - 20 games
'82 Clippers - 19 games
'89 Clippers - 19 games
'93 Mavericks - 19 games
'96 Grizzlies - 19 games

With all of this in mind, you have to wonder what sort of train wreck the Nets' current season is heading for. Getting off to an 0-12 start certainly makes it seem like the somebody cut the brakes already.

"What's so great about punting?" from today's Wall Street Journal

In an article in today's WSJ, the writers focus on the question of whether or not Bill Belichick's decision to punt on Sunday night (a decision that ultimately led to the Patriot's 35-34 loss to the Colts) was the right decision. To give this topic a more interesting slant than the usual Monday morning quarterback diatribes, they dig into the statistics of the situation. Here's an excerpt:

The truth depends of course on how you slice the numbers. Brian Burke, a statistician who has studied the results of fourth-down situations in the NFL, says a team in the Patriot's situation had a 79% chance of winning by going for it (either by converting the 4th-and-2 or stopping the opponent thereafter). That compares favorably to a 70% probability of preventing a foe from driving down the field for a touchdown following a punt.

Above all, though, the essence of Mr. Belichick's "crime" may be something simpler than all this: His decision went against the natural instincts of all human beings when they're forced to make high-stakes decisions. In a recent study, researchers found that when faced with a decision involving risk, people have an overwhelming tendency to make the supposedly safe choice - to err on the side of caution - even though doing so may lead to worse results.

At issue, it seems, is the very idea of what constitutes gambling. If going for it gave the Patriots a statistically better chance of winning - and if aggressive deviations are often better than passive ones - then the gamble would have been to punt, even though that was the seemingly safe play.

Special thanks to Demetrios Frangos for showing me this article.