This article from The Washington Post summarizes research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Both are simple, short articles that show how you can use regression to make an argument. Here, the authors use regression to demonstrate the paucity of funding and publications for research studying gun-related deaths.
A regression line was generated to predict how much money was spent studying common causes of death in the US. Visually, we can see that deaths by firearms aren't receiving funding proportional to the number of deaths they cause. See the graph below.
How to use in class:
1) How is funding meted out by our government to better understand the problems that plague our country? Well, it isn't being given to researchers studying gun violence because of the Dickey Amendment. I grew up in a very hunting friendly/gun-friendly part of Pennsylvania. I've been to the shooting range. And it upsets me that we can't better understand and study best practices for safe gun ownership.
2) Another issue: We don't talk about suicide enough. Half of the gun deaths were suicides.
3) There seems to be under-funding of possible accidents, as opposed to diseases, that cause death (shooting, motor vehicle, falls, and asphyxia). Why might this be?
4) The above image demonstrates correlation/linear relationships as well as gun violence as an influential observation.
5) Regression, y'all.
The WP article states,
"If public health issues were funded based on their death toll, gun violence injuries would have been expected to receive about $1.4 billion in federal research funding over about a decade — compared with the $22 million that it actually got, the study found."
They predicted Y (research funding) based on X (death toll) and found a discrepancy, and the gap is used to make an argument about the funding shortfall. If you go to the JAMA article, they describe the research article publication shortfall as well. According to that regression equation, there should be over 38K articles published about gun deaths. Instead, there are 1,738.
A regression line was generated to predict how much money was spent studying common causes of death in the US. Visually, we can see that deaths by firearms aren't receiving funding proportional to the number of deaths they cause. See the graph below.
How to use in class:
1) How is funding meted out by our government to better understand the problems that plague our country? Well, it isn't being given to researchers studying gun violence because of the Dickey Amendment. I grew up in a very hunting friendly/gun-friendly part of Pennsylvania. I've been to the shooting range. And it upsets me that we can't better understand and study best practices for safe gun ownership.
2) Another issue: We don't talk about suicide enough. Half of the gun deaths were suicides.
3) There seems to be under-funding of possible accidents, as opposed to diseases, that cause death (shooting, motor vehicle, falls, and asphyxia). Why might this be?
4) The above image demonstrates correlation/linear relationships as well as gun violence as an influential observation.
5) Regression, y'all.
The WP article states,
"If public health issues were funded based on their death toll, gun violence injuries would have been expected to receive about $1.4 billion in federal research funding over about a decade — compared with the $22 million that it actually got, the study found."
They predicted Y (research funding) based on X (death toll) and found a discrepancy, and the gap is used to make an argument about the funding shortfall. If you go to the JAMA article, they describe the research article publication shortfall as well. According to that regression equation, there should be over 38K articles published about gun deaths. Instead, there are 1,738.
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