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[Pnx]

Aaah, twisting the numbers in the finest sense! That's horrible.

I'm a bit confused though- are we talking about gun deaths, or murders? Does "stand your ground" count as murder? Murder as a social definition, or as a judicial one? Florida department of law enforcement, why?

In US law there's this whole "duty to retreat" thing. Where basically in many states you're considered obligated to escape from a violent situation before you use lethal force. Basically even if someone is attacking you, it doesn't mean you're free to just shoot and kill them.

The "stand your ground" law Florida passed basically said you're allowed to use lethal force without being obligated to retreat first if you believe it is necessary to prevent someone from committing a "forcible felony" (A term which covers all forms of battery, murder, robbery, and destruction of property).

There was a spike in gun deaths following this law, including the very high profile Trayvon Martin case.

[Knit tie]

Well if you tell people that they can shoot other people on suspicion of assault, of course there will be a spike in gun deaths. It's kinda wierd that any government will allow its citizent to just randomly kill each other like this.

[Aklyon]

Florida is built on weird, though.

[Sirus]

Case in point.

[Steelmagic]

Fucking Florida Man, man.

[Greiger]

I live in Florida. 
This is why I don't go outside.  I get enough crazy seeping in through the windows and during my trips to the corner store thanks.

[MonkeyHead]

I don't keep up on politics much, but someone linked me to a picture of this graph:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Source: http://www.livescience.com/45083-misleading-gun-death-chart.html

If you're like me it might take you a minute to notice what's wrong with the graph.

Reuters, I am dissapoint. I mean, I could understand FOX news pulling a stunt like that to keep the rabid right wing happy, but Reuters? I mean, yes, the graph was probably provided to them like that by the FL Dept of Law Enforcement, but how hard is it to show the data in the correct manner?

[Sergarr]

It took me a minute to notice what's wrong.

Now, who the hell ever makes a graph upside-down?

[MonkeyHead]

Well, last time I saw one like that was on FOX news during the US election, where they were clearly trying to show US unemployment rising under Obama after falling under Bush - the only thing is that the data didnt show what they wanted so of course inverting the axis was the only thing to do...

[Frumple]

I live in Florida. 
This is why I don't go outside.  I get enough crazy seeping in through the windows and during my trips to the corner store thanks.

This person gets it.

Also it is too hot. Which is probably half the reason it's as crazy as it is. The other half is a mix of low income and drugs.

[Aklyon]

It took me a minute to notice what's wrong.

Now, who the hell ever makes a graph upside-down?

Politicians, Fox news, and people who are incredibly insistant that their way is the right way and you're stupid.

[Frumple]

It took me a minute to notice what's wrong.

Now, who the hell ever makes a graph upside-down?

Politicians, Fox news, and people who are incredibly insistant that their way is the right way and you're stupid.

Though I think in that case, it's mostly so they can pull the "blood dripping from the walls" thing. Which is kinda' neat, artistically, but terrible, statistically.

[Putnam]

Why isn't there a religion based around ϕ yet?

Because that'd be like basing a religion around the square root of two. Sure, it's got some interesting properties (it's the intersection point of a sine and cosine! Its inverse plus its imaginary inverse has an absolute value of 1!), but these values are mostly the same thing when you think about it and it's not much of an interesting number otherwise.

But the Golden Ratio is literally everywhere.

Not in as many places as a lot of other, similar constants, like 1 or 2 or sqrt(2).

[Descan]

It took me a minute to notice what's wrong.

Now, who the hell ever makes a graph upside-down?

Politicians, Fox news, and people who are incredibly insistant that their way is the right way and you're stupid.

Though I think in that case, it's mostly so they can pull the "blood dripping from the walls" thing. Which is kinda' neat, artistically, but terrible, statistically.

I read that too in the article, and all I could think of was "That would have worked if it had actually LOOKED like blood!"

They half-assed it, basically. Either make it blood-drips falling from the ceiling, or don't invert it. Don't invert it without making it bloody!

[scrdest]

It took me a minute to notice what's wrong.

Now, who the hell ever makes a graph upside-down?

You've obviously never graphed absorbance.