Chart assignment
Charts to read and discuss
Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.
Chart 1 of 1 · Health
How has the US cancer death rate changed since 1900?
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The US cancer death rate rose from 114.8 deaths per 100,000 people in 1900 to a peak of 216.0 in 1990, then fell 31% to 149.1 by 2018. Rates are age-adjusted, so an older population does not by itself push them up. Cause-of-death coding has been revised several times since 1900, so small jumps can reflect those changes. This CDC dataset stops at 2018.
Questions to discuss
- In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
- Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
- Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?
Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Age-adjusted death rates for selected major causes of death (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2018
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