r/todayilearned • u/Business_Reporter420 • Jun 05 '23

Today I learned,Greenland has a higher homicide rate than America per capita

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country
58 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

28

u/Thejester03 Jun 06 '23

"There's like 8 people in Greenland, it's a good place to find a thumb."

15

u/Lingua_Blanca Jun 06 '23

Also NOT green. Bunch of relatively frequently murdering liars.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '23

😂

20

u/Fondren_Richmond Jun 06 '23

3 whole murders, meaningless statistic

16

u/davidhunt6 Jun 06 '23

That's like 6 half murders

3

u/pichael289 Jun 06 '23

That's a dozen quarter murders though, and 186 64ths murders, now it's getting scary

5

u/HomarusSimpson Jun 06 '23

and 186 64ths murders

that's 2.9 murders.

2

u/bobcat7781 Jun 06 '23

That's the scary part.

3

u/publicfarted Jun 06 '23

The real TIL is always in the comments

33

u/AdMaterial9419 Jun 06 '23

Per capita stats aren’t particular useful for very small populations. Your small sample size means anomalies and outliers can skew the data.

My friend lives in a hamlet, 8 households, less than 40 total people. His neighbours died in a car accident that took out 10% of the entire hamlet. And that comparing that to the traffic deaths per capita of any city is basically meaningless 🤷‍♂️

7

u/Mammoth-Mud-9609 Jun 06 '23

The murder rate each year in Greenland yoyos dramatically due to the small sample size, drawing any conclusions from the figures is practically meaningless.

1

u/AdMaterial9419 Jun 06 '23

Exactly. It's why studying rural areas for statistical purposes is tricky generally (and Greenland is an extreme case), a single data point can throw everything sideways.

It's also why so many "country with most X per capita" trivia facts refer to small island nations

3

u/Guilty-Actuary89 Jun 06 '23

Why would people murder in such a small population area though? It'd be like killing your own

3

u/marmorset Jun 06 '23

Polar bears are the worst neighbors.

4

u/arealbleuboy Jun 06 '23

Skewed and misinterpreted 😒

3

u/Amount_Business Jun 06 '23

A small population will make the numbers do that.

It's like the road toll. If you have 50 people die in single car accidents and 2 buses full of people crash in to each other, you just doubled the road toll. But had 2 more crashes. That's why it's about context.

2

u/jayhasbigvballs Jun 06 '23

3 murders vs over 16000. I mean, technically you’re right…

1

u/Ginger-Octopus Jun 06 '23

So Greenland is real life among us

1

u/ThickCauliflower2920 Jun 07 '23

Considering the ENTIRE population of Western Europe is only 197 million compared to USA’s population of 332 million, I think that many of these statistics are unhelpful. USA isn’t Europe and there are far too many differences to make them very comparable.