Findings & Visualizations

Research Questions and Findings

• How were different communities and locations in MN affected by the war? Were certain locations in MN disproportionately affected by the deaths of soldiers?

The visualization below provides a look into which areas in MN were most affected by the deaths of soldiers during WW1. It shows geographically where soldiers who died were living in MN. We chose to use a map as the data included the county location where the soldiers were living, and wanted to see if there were differences among them. Because different counties, like Ramsey and Hennepin, have larger populations, there were more soldiers who were living there that died. To account for this, we collected and incorporated 1910 census data that included the total populations for each county, and divided the number of soldiers who died by the population to get a per capita death rate. This allows us to more accurately identify which counties saw higher rates of death due to the war. This per capita death rate is shown on a color scale in the map. We found that Cook county had the highest death rate, while Lake of the Woods had the lowest rate. The northern half (namely north west) of the state did appear to have slightly higher death rates compared to the southern half, though in general the death rates were pretty evenly distributed across the state.

• Are causes of death distributed somewhat equally among the data set? Is one cause of death disproportionately more prevalent than others, and what could this mean about the nature of war, age of soldiers, and resources available at the time?

We found that the causes of death were not distributed equally. In the visualization below, one can see that being killed in action was the most common death for Minnesota soldiers at 779 deaths. Influenza and Pneumonia were the next two causes of death to follow. With a different perspective, one could say that sickness did have a higher death rate because influenza, pneumonia, and disease total higher than death from wounds and in action. Since total deaths from influenza, pneumonia, and diseases result in a larger number together than “in action” and “from wounds”, we wanted to look at how age played a role with death; being older can make people more susceptible to die from sickness and disease.

However, when we compare the cause of death with age, we see that there are no staggering trends. The spread of age is very similar throughout all causes of death. Surprisingly, the highest median age is for killed in action. One would think there would be a higher median age for influenza, disease, or pneumonia. We could not conclude as to why this was the case. Perhaps, older men were the ones leading people into battle risking their lives. Also, maybe there is nothing notable as to why the median for killed in action is marginally greater than influenza. However, we did note that the most compact middle 50% was for those who died of wounds, indicating that those in battle were often similar in age, around the mid 20's.