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.

  1. How many food recalls are there each month?
  2. Which big U.S. cities have the highest murder rates?

Chart 1 of 2 · Food and drug safety

How many food recalls are there each month?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

The FDA classified 46 food recalls in September 2026. Since January 2025, the monthly count has ranged from 30 in May 2025 to 69 in October 2025. Each recall counts once, in the month of the weekly Enforcement Report where FDA first listed it, often weeks after the company announced it, so months with five weekly reports tend to count more. The month in progress is left off the chart; its newest recalls are listed below it. Meat, poultry and most egg products are USDA's to recall and aren't included.

Questions to discuss

  1. In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
  2. Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
  3. Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?

Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Enforcement Reports (openFDA food recall data) (Public domain (U.S. government work); source U.S. Food and Drug Administration, openFDA) · Data as of Oct 28, 2026

Open the chart and its numbers

Chart 2 of 2 · Crime

Which big U.S. cities have the highest murder rates?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

In 2025 St. Louis, MO had the highest murder rate of the 89 biggest U.S. cities whose police reported a full year to the FBI, about 51.3 per 100,000 people, followed by Memphis, TN (31.0) and Cleveland, OH (28.0). Irvine, CA (0.0) and Plano, TX (0.7) had the lowest; the U.S. rate was about 4.4. Departments that didn't report a full year are left out (for 2025, New Orleans, Orlando and St. Petersburg, Florida). Each rate is per person the department serves, and a few, such as Las Vegas, Honolulu, Jacksonville and Louisville, serve their whole county. A city's rate also depends on where its borders fall, so compare cities with care.

How to read this chart

Each bar is the number of murders in a city in one year for every 100,000 people its police department serves. The dashed line is the U.S. rate. Murders are rare, so in a smaller city a handful more or fewer in one year can move its rate and its rank a lot.

Questions to discuss

  1. How many cities on the chart have a murder rate above the U.S. rate, and how many are below it?
  2. Why does a chart like this use murders per 100,000 people instead of the total number of murders in each city?
  3. A city's rank can jump from one year to the next. Why might small numbers make rates bounce around?

Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, Uniform Crime Reporting Program (Public domain (U.S. government work); source FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025

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