"Nunavut’s [suicide] rate is 100 per 100,000, ten times higher than the rest of Canada and seven times higher than the US. When I visited Nunavut’s capital, Iqaluit, in July, virtually every Inuit I met had lost at least one relative to suicide, and some recounted as many as five or six family suicides, plus those of friends, coworkers, and other acquaintances."
So one in 1,000 kills himself and nearly everyone has a relative that did it? Pretty big families over there.
Yes. Let's roughly estimate the probabilities here. We know that 1 in 1000 people suicide every year. Say the average life expectancy is 71 years [1], so a person living a community of 1000 people will roughly see 71 people suicide across their life.
Say, a person has roughly 32 relatives (parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews). It's fairly easy to get to 32.
Then the probability of at least one relative committing suicide is 1-(1-71/1000)^32 = 91%. Which is indeed "virtually every Inuit". With 50 relatives it is 97%.
That's right. I hate it when people mess up the units like that. When I read that "X's GDP is $Y billion" with no mention of "year" or "annual" I am almost as annoyed as when journalists can't tell the difference between energy and power.
You're technically right, but I don't think I've ever seen GDP quoted as something other than per year, so there's no real ambiguity. The bigger problem is comparing GDP (a flow) to quantities that are stocks (total debt, market cap of X, etc.)
A slightly related problem is GDP vs GDP per capita, which during periods of high immigration or of otherwise rapid population growth can paint quite different pictures.
So one in 1,000 kills himself and nearly everyone has a relative that did it? Pretty big families over there.