Chapter 11: How Many Deaths?: Education for Statistical Empathy

In this paper, we suggest the term “statistical empathy” for the ability to relate statistical data to the reality of what they stand for. To put the argument in stark terms, we use historical and contemporary examples of representations of mass killings. Alongside visual and literary artistic expressions, we exemplify mathematical tools designed to help convey the scale of such tragedies. We illustrate the political processes of managing information through analysis of two highly disputed issues, namely gun violence in the United States and the estimating of excess civilian deaths in Iraq attributable to the American invasion.