Socrata

I find the annual State Farm deer-vehicle collision data to be fascinating. It shows you the likelihood that you’ll encounter a deer with your vehicle at some point in the next year. How do they calculate that? It’s a pretty simple algorithm. They divide the number of reported deer collisions by the number of registered vehicles in any given state.

For the last three years, West Virginia has led the nation.

There’s an interesting social commentary buried in the data. You’re more likely to hit a deer in states where deer hunting is forbidden. The deer population grows unbounded and increases the probability you’ll hit one. (full disclosure: I’ve never been deer hunting nor do I own a hunting rifle).

If you’re interested, here’s the data:

And here’s the full:
State Farm Press Release

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.