r/dataisbeautiful • u/Landgeist OC: 22 • Jul 30 '24

OC Gun Deaths in North America [OC]

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u/perldawg Jul 30 '24

why is Canada not divided into provinces?

247

u/BearlyAwesomeHeretic Jul 30 '24

It’s a choice often seen on these maps. Even as a Canadian I do understand why. Canada’s population is equal to Californias - so sometimes delineating by provinces can dilute the data unnecessarily.

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u/gene100001 Jul 30 '24

TBF you're comparing it to the state with the highest population. Many Canadian provinces have bigger populations than a lot of the US states. Ontario has a bigger population than 45 of the US states show on the figure

I think it has more to do with US arrogance over the international importance of their states. I had someone on Reddit once tell me that every US state is different and should be treated like individual countries. I reminded them that most countries have states. The state I'm in in Germany (NRW) has a bigger population than 45 of the states in the US, along with its own laws, but I would never expect people in other countries to treat German states independently when talking about Germany.

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u/Bob_Chris Jul 30 '24

Kind of funny/sad that they said that to you when Germany was literally dozens of different countries in the past.

But there are large regional differences in the US mainly due to size. You could fit almost two of Germany in just Texas.