Description

Some sociologist suspect that highly publicised suicides may trigger additional suicides. In one investigation of this hypothesis, D.P. Phillips collected information about 17 airplane crashes that were known (because of notes left behind) to be murder–suicides. For each of these crashes, Phillips reported an index of the news coverage (circulation of nine newspapers devoting space to the crash multiplied by length of coverage) and the number of multiple-fatality plane crashes during the week following the publicised crash. This data frame contains the collected data.

Usage

Format

A data frame with 17 observations on the following 2 variables.

Index

Index for the amount of newspaper coverage given the murder–suicide

Crashes

Multiple-fatality crashes in the week following a murder–suicide by plane crash

Source

Ramsey, F.L. and Schafer, D.W. (2002). The Statistical Sleuth: A Course in Methods of Data Analysis (2nd ed), Duxbury.

References

Phillips, D.P. (1978). Airplane Accident Fatalities Increase Just After Newspaper Stories About Murder and Suicide, Science 201: 748–750.

Examples