What does the bar graph show?
The bar graph shows the age-adjusted cancer incidence rate in each county. The vertical line toward the middle of the graph shows the New York State rate (the number of people per 100,000 individuals in New York State who get this type of cancer). The line that shows the “New York State Rate” may not fall exactly in the middle of the bar graph. This is because it is not the average of all the county rates. It is the total number of new cases of this kind of cancer in the State, divided by the total number of people in the State (either males or females). Depending on your needs, you can view the graphs that have a confidence interval for the county rates. A confidence interval is similar to a “margin of error,” so you may wish to know this information. The confidence interval would tell you that we are 95% sure that the cancer rate for the county falls between the lines shown.
