Plot of the Week 5

Last week, David Epstein (from Sports Illustrated) reported that, contrary to popular belief, recent studies have shown that NFL players actually have a longer life expectancy than non-NFL players.  You can find his original article here.  The printed SI article included some graphics, but I thought that the data could be visualized better.  So I am presenting the same data as in the article but in a more effective way.

The first plot shows that fewer NFL players have died than would be expected in the general US male population (*when looking at men with similar age and race to the NFL players in the study), 334 vs. 625, a 43% decrease.  The different colors represent different death causes.

The second plot looks at the expected and actual death rates for 3 special death categories: suicide, heart disease and cancer.  In each of these categories, NFL players have a lower death rate than the US male population (including suicide, 9 vs 22, a 59% decrease!!!).

The original academic paper that reported these numbers and results can be found here.  I only glanced through the paper for a minute, but the statistical methods seemed reasonably sound to me.  Even though this data was collected in 2007, these number seem to suggest that anecdotal evidence (i.e., the media) is responsible for exaggerating the link between playing in the NFL and suicide.