Question 11
A student reads that homicide accounts for 51.0% of deaths among rap musicians and 51.5% among hip hop musicians, against 6.0% across all genres, and concludes that rap is an exceptionally dangerous profession. Which cautions below are sound?
At least half of all rap and hip hop musicians who have ever lived are still alive, so the observed deaths are a small and unrepresentative slice
The distortion is more severe the younger the genre
Dying violently or unusually may itself contribute to fame, which affects who enters the sample at all
The figures are expressed as rates per 100,000 musicians, so the comparison across genres is adjusted