When sharks attack!

3

The Junk Chart blog discusses problems with a chart which (poorly) presents statistics on the prevalence of shark attacks by different species.

Here is the same data presented by overlaying two bar charts by using the SGPLOT procedure. I think this approach works well because the number of deaths is always fewer than the number of attacks, and the visual juxtaposition of deaths and attacks gives the viewer an impression of the relative risk of each shark killing someone during an attack.

The graph was created by using the following SAS program.

data Sharks;
input Species $14. Attacks Deaths;
label Attacks="Attacks" Deaths="Deaths";
datalines;
White         394 61
Tiger         140 28
Bull           98 21
Sandtiger      74  2
Hammerhead     41  0
Blacktip       33  0
Blue           36  4
Blacktip reef  16  0
Shortfin mako  43  2
Gray reef       9  0
;
run;
proc sort data=Sharks; by descending Attacks; run;
data Others;
Species="Others"; Attacks=276; Deaths=9; output;
run;
 
data Sharks; set Sharks Others; run;
 
title 'Shark Attacks and Deaths by Species';
footnote justify=left 'Source: Shark Foundation';
footnote2 justify=left 'http://www.shark.ch/Information/Accidents/index.html';
proc sgplot data=Sharks;
   hbar Species / response=Attacks datalabel;
   hbar Species / response=Deaths datalabel;
   xaxis label=" " grid;
   yaxis label=" " discreteorder=data;
run;
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About Author

Rick Wicklin

Distinguished Researcher in Computational Statistics

Rick Wicklin, PhD, is a distinguished researcher in computational statistics at SAS and is a principal developer of SAS/IML software. His areas of expertise include computational statistics, simulation, statistical graphics, and modern methods in statistical data analysis. Rick is author of the books Statistical Programming with SAS/IML Software and Simulating Data with SAS.

3 Comments

    • Rick Wicklin

      Yes. Interesting to see how many great white attacks there are.
      Duunnn dunnn... Duuuunnnn duun... Duuunnnnnnnn dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn dunnnn

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