America's Safest Cities: America's Best Sports Fans

by Justin Bopp on Oct 31, 2009 4:11 AM EDT in Graph of the Day Comment 16 comments

Coincidence?

Forbes.com recently unveiled its 2009 version of "America's Safest Cities" based on statistical measurements of violent crime, traffic deaths, deaths in the workplace, and distance from natural disasters in the forty largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

They might have considered "sports fan quality" in an effort to save time, but if "violent crime, traffic deaths, deaths in the workplace, and distance from natural disasters" doesn't conjure up the 2004-2009 Kansas City Royals / Kansas City Chiefs for you, you probably live in Florida and hate sports.

Me? I'm starting to get a leeeeetle jealous of Boston. We all know about the "Decade of Boston," (thanks Simmons), but now they're one of the top 5 safest places of all major metropolitan areas in the country? What's next?

Poll

What would make you even more jealous of Boston?

Getting the Summer Olympics (and nobody protests).

14 votes

Getting Albert Pujols and Zack Greinke for a couple AAA guys.

152 votes

Tom Brady invents time-traveling DeLorean, goes back in time and convinces Brees to play tennis, wins another 3 Super Bowls.

9 votes

Large Hadron Collider is shamed into shutting down after Kevin Garnett realizes that yes, anything is possible, and creates black hole while shooting free throws.

21 votes

196 votes | Poll has closed

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Comments

lol at Florida

by vivaelpujols on Oct 31, 2009 4:39 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

(Sad face)

Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
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Check me out at Beyond the Box Score as well.

by SFiercex4 on Oct 31, 2009 10:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

haha

(sorry)

To be fair, there does seem to be a line of “safety” that pretty much resembles the Mason Dixon.

See Data Differently.
beyondtheboxscore.com | Twitter: @ justinbopp

by Justin Bopp on Nov 1, 2009 1:39 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Wondering if that's just St. Pete, or the area in general...

Or if I’m naive about the peril I face. Hmm…

@bs_uf15bosox9be 12 pieces of bacon, a Red Bull, and go get 'em; Learn to use SB Nation

by bs.uf15bosox9bears23 on Nov 1, 2009 12:42 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

An Incredibly Sloppy List

They calculate ranks for four categories: Violent Crime, Workplace Fatality Rates, Traffic Death Rates, Natural Disaster Risk. Then they simply sum the four rank numbers to obtain a city rating. That’s the wrong way to sum probabilities!!!! The third comment on the original article says as much

It’s also notable that the two cities with the lowest traffic death rates, Boston & New York, are the ones with the worst traffic. I guess it’s hard to have a fatal accident when you’re inching along in a bumper to bumper jam.

by ekogan on Oct 31, 2009 8:21 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs