'How You Will Die' Predicts Causes of Death Based on Demographics

By: Joey Haar - Oct 26, 2016
References: flowingdata & thenextweb
Though thinking about death isn't exactly a fun leisure activity, Nathan Yau's 'How You Will Die' dataviz makes the prospect one's demise a little easier to confront. The graphical interface uses demographic data to assess the likelihood of different causes of death based solely on one's gender, current age, and race.

How You Will Die's data comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Underlying Cause of Death database, which provides the cause of death for anyone in the US who died between 1999 and 2014.

The graphical side of the chart consists of a series of dots that each represent one of the user's "simulated lives." As the age climbs, some of these dots die of various causes while other continue on. By the end of the simulation, once all the simulated lives are done, users can get an idea of the chances of various causes of death.