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 2 · Housing
What is the typical home worth in your county?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
Search any of the 3,139 U.S. counties. In the Census Bureau's 5-year survey ending in 2024, the typical owner-occupied home was worth the most in Teton County, Wyoming, $1,633,900, and the least in Stonewall County, Texas, $48,600. Values are what owners estimate their homes would sell for, over five years, and small counties' estimates have wide margins of error.
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: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates (Public domain (U.S. government work). This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.) · Data as of Dec 31, 2024
Open the chart and its numbersChart 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
- How many cities on the chart have a murder rate above the U.S. rate, and how many are below it?
- Why does a chart like this use murders per 100,000 people instead of the total number of murders in each city?
- 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
Open the chart and its numbersTeachers: make your own chart assignment, or change this one. Free, no account needed.