# death rates per 100,000 people: which people?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-rates-per-100-000-people-which-people/422955>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 16, 2007, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-rates-per-100-000-people-which-people/422955 "2007-10-16T21:39:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2007, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-rates-per-100-000-people-which-people/422955/1 "2007-10-16T21:39:36Z")

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I’m puzzling over some statistics I came across yesterday in the NYT, where a report detailing falling cancer death rates was the story. The graph that accompanied the report shows that death rates from all cancers, both sexes = about 180 per 100,000 people in 2004. What does that mean, actually? That of any randomly selected 100,000 people in the U.S., 180 of them would die from cancer in that year? What exactly does “death rate per 100,000 people” mean? The article only refers to the report “using a statistical technique to analyze death rates.” Clearly, I don’t understand statistics enough to make heads or tails of it, even if I could access the original. Dopers?

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**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2007, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-rates-per-100-000-people-which-people/422955/2 "2007-10-16T21:49:31Z")

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It’s a way of expressing number of deaths divided by population. This way people can talk in round numbers (180) rather than small fractions, while dealing with a number where both the number of deaths and the size of the population are changing over time.

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2007, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-rates-per-100-000-people-which-people/422955/3 "2007-10-16T21:52:11Z")

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> [@CC](#):
>
> …of any randomly selected 100,000 people in the U.S., 180 of them would die from cancer in that year?

Yes, that’s just what it means. Of course any given random sample might be skewed one way or other for whatever reason, but across the entire population, that’s what it is expressing.

ETA: for another take, [the CIA World Factbook](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html) shows the total mortality rate of the US is:

> [@](#):
>
> 8.26 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)

Or in other words, 826 of any given 100,000 people died in the year that the stats were recorded.

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2007, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-rates-per-100-000-people-which-people/422955/4 "2007-10-16T22:00:14Z")

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Missed the window to edit my edit: “_an estimated_ 826 of any given 100,000 people _will die_ in the year that the stats _are predicting_”.