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. Which U.S. cities of 100,000 or more have the highest murder rates?
  2. How fast has the world come online?

Chart 1 of 2 · Crime

Which U.S. cities of 100,000 or more 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 313 U.S. cities of 100,000 people or more whose police reported a full year to the FBI, about 51.3 per 100,000 people, followed by Birmingham, AL (43.0) and Memphis, TN (31.0); the U.S. rate was about 4.4. Search for any city to see its rate and rank. In a city of 100,000, one more or one fewer murder moves the rate by 1, so a smaller city's rate can jump from year to year. Departments that didn't report a full year are left out, and each rate is per person the department serves; a few serve their whole county. A city's rate also depends on where its borders fall, so compare cities with care.

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: 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 numbers

Chart 2 of 2 · World

How fast has the world come online?

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

73.6% of the world's people used the internet in 2025, up from 15.6% in 2005, the first year the World Bank gives a world figure. It counts people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months. The world figures are estimates by the International Telecommunication Union.

How to read this chart

Each point is the share of the world's people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months, as estimated by the International Telecommunication Union. The axis starts at zero, so the height shows the true share. The steeper the line, the faster people were coming online.

Questions to discuss

  1. About what share of the world was online in the first year on the chart, and in the latest year?
  2. Did the share grow faster in some years than others? What could have sped it up?
  3. Using the internet once in three months counts here. What does this number leave out about how people get online?

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Individuals using the Internet (% of population) (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025

Open the chart and its numbers

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