ALERT!!!

Gun Violence in America

The Suicides/Homicides Ratio Reveals Americans are Killing Themselves Not Each Other Across States Pardon my Texan (not my French), these idiots are just blowing their own brains off, not each other.
State Suicides to Homicides Ratio (S/H)
CA TX NY FL IL PA OH MI GA NC NJ VA WA MA IN AZ TN MO MD WI MN CO AL SC LA 1.11 1.86 0.87 1.90 0.77 1.52 1.83 1.37 1.62 1.88 0.72 2.13 4.07 1.10 2.04 2.29 2.00 1.46 0.73 3.57 4.31 4.40 1.60 1.71 0.89

Suicides Homicides State Suicides to Table 5 of Table 4 of Homicides GPP GPP study Ratio study (S/H)
1492 1702 459 1454 442 762 724 601 718 707 187 576 464 138 455 620 585 489 222 378 280 427 454 392 385 1342 913 527 767 577 501 396 440 443 376 260 271 114 126 223 271 293 335 306 106 65 97 283 229 432 KY OR OK CT IA MS AR KS UT NV NM WV NE ID HI ME NH RI MT DL SD AK ND VT WY 3.23 6.27 2.87 1.12 5.21 1.25 2.02 3.09 10.19 3.21 2.68 4.47 2.59 15.17 7.31 1.76 8.29 0.96 3.57

Suicides Homicides Table 5 Table 4 of of GPP GPP study study

404 376 376 110 177 256 266 210 275 289 204 210 106 182 37 95 102 30 141 43 65 107 56 66 83 125 60 131 98 34 205 132 68 27 90 76 47 41 12 13 17 17 45 30

Data Source: America Under the Gun, by Arkadi Gerney, Chelsea Parsons, and Charles Posner (Click here). The two letter US Postal abbreviation for each state is used. Only 6 of 44 states for which data is available have S/H < 1.

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Firearms Suicides or Homicides, y

1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

0.0

50.0

100.0

150.0

200.0

250.0

300.0

350.0

400.0

State Population, x [in 100,000s]

Figure 1: The alarming trend in the number of firearm-suicides (blue diamonds) versus the number of firearm-homicides, across all states (38 of 44, see text). Here we consider the states with populations in excess of 5 million (or 50 one hundred thousands). The red dots indicate the number of firearm-homicides. Red was used to symbolize violent killing. But more alarming as we see here is the preponderance of the data that reveal more suicides than homicides. Americans are NOT killing each other with their guns. They are killing themselves. NRA lobbyists, please wake up! It is your old mom and dad, who live in Florida, it is your grandma and grandpa who are most likely killing themselves (I have not studied this in detail and am no expert and will let other social scientists make the final call, but my intuitive feeling is that the FL figures imply that the senior citizens of FL are killing themselves in alarming numbers.) I am simply reposting here the document that I had uploaded earlier today calling attention to the high incidence of firearms related suicides as opposed to homicides. In that article, see link below, I had considered only the data for Michigan (my home state) to show that a remarkable homogeneity of
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occurrence of suicides across Michigan counties, big and small. The number of suicides increase, as the population increases, following a simple linear law. More remarkable is the fact that there is hardly any scatter revealed. The average number of suicides, over the years 1999-2003, increases with increasing population. The data fall on a nearly PERFECT straight line, with the equation y = 4.67x + 1.03 with the linear regression coefficient r2 = 0.9778, see Appendix 1. 1. Michigan Firearms Related Suicides: The Linear SuicidesPopulation Law, Published May 14, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/141334599/Michigan-Firearms-RelatedSuicides-The-Suicides-County-Population-Law Here I have compiled the suicides and the homicides for all 50 states and highlighted the rather high value for the Suicide/Homicides (S/H) ratio across 38 of 44 states for which data is available for these gun violence indicators, as we see from the yellow highlights in the table on page 1. The Suicides/Homicides (S/H) ratio varies from 1.10 for Massachusetts (MA) to as high as 15.17 for Idaho (ID). Only six states, Delaware (DL), Louisiana (LA), New York (NY), Illinois (IL), Maryland (MD), and New Jersey (NJ) have a S/H ratio of less than 1. Even in these states the S/H ratio varies from a low of 0.72 for NJ to a high of 0.96 for DL. No information (on homicides) is available for six of the remaining states (HI, NH, SD, ND, VT and WY) to determine the S/H ratio. This is illustrated even more dramatically in Figures 1 and 2. The data for the larger states with populations over 5 million is plotted in Figure 1. The data for the smaller states, with populations under 5 million, is plotted in Figure 2. It is clear that we have a suicide EPIDEMIC in the United States. Violent crimes in the USA, especially the increasing incidence of mass murder rampages over the last decade or so, has always engaged our attention and fed the popular perception that we are a violent nation. This is further exacerbated by the fact that Americans have the highest gun ownership rates in the world.
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Firearms Suicides or Homicides, y

500 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 0.00 10.00 20.00 30.00 40.00 50.00 60.00

State Population, x [in 100,000s]

Figure 2: The alarming trends in the number of firearm suicides (blue diamonds) versus the number of firearms homicides, across all states (38 of 44, see text). Here we consider the smaller states with under 5 million (or 50 one hundred thousands) populations. The red dots indicate the number of firearm homicides. Red was used to indicate violent killing. But more alarming again is the preponderance of the data that reveal more suicides than homicides in each state. Americans are killing themselves, not each other. Sadly, however, the brutal facts here speak otherwise. Americans are NOT running amok killing each other with their guns, as the popular perception goes around the world. They are actually blowing their own heads off! The number of firearms-suicides exceed the firearms-homicides in 38 out of 44 states for which data is available to determine the S/H ratio. My earlier interest in the study of traffic fatality data (I was a R & D professional at the General Motors Research Labs in the 1990s), see Refs. [18,19], tells me that immediate action must be taken to reverse this trend.
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What we have here is a SUICIDE EPIDEMIC just like the carnage on the highways in the 1960s which forced Congress to hold highly publicized hearings and also enact the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (signed by President Lyndon Johnson, on September 9, 1966). This led to the creation of the US Department of Transportation and the safety standards for motor vehicles and also roads, which we now take for granted.

60,000 55,000 50,000 45,000 40,000 35,000

30,000
25,000 1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

Traffic Fatalities (vertical axis) in the US plotted versus time t in years showing the rising fatalities in the 1950s and 1960s. Also, traffic fatalities went up for the first time in 2012, after a six years of straight decline since 2005 (click here). For further details: see http://www.scribd.com/doc/101982715/Does-Speed-KillForgotten-US-Highway-Deaths-in-1950s-and-1960s

Seat belt laws were acted in most states and safety features such as seat belts and airbags (once resisted by the auto industry, citing high costs) are now standard for almost all motor vehicles, even the entry level vehicles, not just
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the high end luxury models. However, in the 1960s, there was a huge increase in the number of highway deaths, year after year, with no speed limits on many states. A literal carnage on the roads and Congress was forced to act. However, the number of traffic fatalities started decreasing only after the National Speed Limit of 55 mph was also implemented, shortly thereafter, following the Arab oil embargo of 1973 (to punish America for its support of Israel during the Seven Day War of 1973). And, now we have a similar but unheralded carnage in 38 states with Americans literally blowing their own heads off and killing themselves with the ready availability of firearms. It is difficult to recover from a suicide attempt when one shoots a bullet into ones own head. A garden hose is readily available and could be used too, but many such suicide attempts with ropes and the likes, to hang and kill oneself, are often botched. Or, the person suffering from severe mental depression is merely trying to call attention with no real intention to kill oneself. But, there is no escaping from a gunshot wound to ones own head if a severely depressed person reaches for a gun. So, unlike the position taken by some of my friends on the other side of this gun violence debate, SUICIDES ARE INDEED A VERY RELEVANT PART of the gun violence debate. May be even the ONLY RELEVANT part of the debate! Just look at what Texans are doing to themselves. There were 1702 firearms suicides in in 2010 versus 913 homicide, or a S/H ratio of 1.86. All hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas. Pardon my Texan (not French), these idiots are just blowing their own brains off, NOT each other. Or, look at the number for New York and California, states with strong gun laws. The S/H ratio is 0.87 for NY and 1.11 for CA. Much lower than Texas but not low enough. So, this is what gun control legislation needs to focus on. The steps to be taken to discourage mass murders are easy. The steps to be taken to prevent ready access to guns for this self-inflicted violence are harder to take. The pro-gun lobby, the NRA and the Second Amendment Absolutists must pause and wonder. The debate is NOT about your guns! The debate is about
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whether we should remain a country where you might be the next one to blow your own head off, or one of your loved ones might be blowing their own heads off. Look at the numbers for Florida too, home to many senior citizens. The S/H ratio for Florida is 1.90, 1454 suicides versus 767 homicides. It is your old mom and dad, grandpa and grandma, who seem to blowing their own brains off with their guns. Do we really want this to continue? This is what I have learned today as I was reviewing the gun violence statistics. And I have done my part to call attention to this tragedy that is consuming Americans literally. Now, it is the duty of everyone who reads this article to take the next step and forward this to a friend and loved one and call the attention of your Congressperson and Senators to act and pass legislation that will put an end to this tragedy. It can be done. It was done. It was done in 1966 when Congress had the courage to pass the National Traffic Safety Act.

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Appendix 1
In this appendix, we will discuss the linear suicide-population law which reveals a remarkable homogeneity in the occurrence of suicides across all populations, big and small. The text, as presented in the reference cited earlier is reproduced here verbatim.
70

Firearms-related Suicides, y

60

50

40

30

20

10

y = 4.67x + 1.03 r2 = 0.9778 Michigan counties (1999-2003)

0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 12.0 14.0 16.0

County population, x [in 100,000s]

Figure 3: One of ten gun violence indicators in the Gerney, Parsons, Posner study, the firearms-related suicides death rate for Michigan counties (1999-20003) is considered here. The average number of suicides in each county and the suicide rate is reported which gives the average population to prepare this x-y plot. In this fourth of a series of articles on my analysis of the gun violence data, see reference list, I would like to call IMMEDIATE AND URGENT attention to
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one of the saddest and most tragic aspects of gun violence in the US the high percentage of firearms-related deaths that can be attributed to suicides. Figure 3 here provides a graphical illustration of this tragic statistic for my home state of Michigan for the period 1999-2003 (click here for the full report). The data for the larger Michigan counties is compiled in Table 1. A comparison and the firearms-related suicides versus homicides for various states is presented in Table 2.
8.00

Firearms-related Suicide rate, y/x Per 100,000

7.00
6.00 5.00 4.00 3.00 2.00 1.00

y/x = 4.67 + (1.03/x) r2 = 0.9778 Michigan counties (1999-2003) Hyperbolic law

0.00
0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 12.0 14.0 16.0

County population, x [in 100,000s]

Figure 4: The firearms-suicide rates for Michigan counties (1999-20003) is seen to decrease systematically with increasing population following the hyperbolic law y/x = h + (c/x). Although a cursory examination of the data compiled in Table 1, for various Michigan counties, might suggest a random variation in the firearms-related suicide rates (per 100,000) for various Michigan counties, as seen from the plot in Figure 4, this is not a random variation but a very systematic one and
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follows the hyperbolic law, y/x =h + (c/x). This hyperbolic law is a natural consequence and the corollary of the linear law y = hx +c relating suicides y and the county population x.

Table 1: Michigan Firearm Homicides and Suicides (Average number for the years 1999-2003)
County/City Homicides Rate Suicides Rate Berrien 6 3.5 8 4.9 Calhoun 4 2.9 8 6.1 Genesee 28 6.4 23 5.3 Ingham 6 2.1 12 4.4 Macomb 13 1.6 40 4.9 Oakland 26 2.2 54 4.5 Saginaw 12 5.6 11 5.4 Wayne (out-county) 42 3.8 60 5.3 Detroit 304 32.5 41 4.3 Total 494 4.9 540 5.4 Data source: Firearms Homicide and Suicides Michigan, February 2006 http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Firearm_Homicide__Suicide_Report_162 746_7.pdf The other counties reported homicides/suicides of 0, 1, 2, and 3 and accounted for the difference.

Average annual number of firearm deaths in Michigan (1999-2003) by incident type

Incident type Number % of total Suicide 540 50.7 Homicide 494 46.3 Unintentional 14 1.3 Undetermined Intent 7 0.7 Legal Intervention 10 0.9 Total 1065 100 Data Source: Firearm Homicides and Suicides in Michigan (click here). Total is given as 1066, not 1065, in the original data source but % are as given here.

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Table 2a: Firearms Homicides vs. Suicides (2010)

State Population Suicides Homicides State Population In 100,00 Table 5 of Table 4 of In 100,000 GPP GPP study study
CA TX NY FL IL PA OH MI GA NC NJ VA WA MA IN AZ TN MO MD WI MN CO AL SC LA 373.00 251.40 193.67 188.10 128.49 127.00 115.29 98.85 96.90 95.41 87.79 80.00 67.25 65.40 64.81 63.92 63.45 59.85 57.66 56.84 53.03 50.29 47.79 46.23 45.35 1492 1702 459 1454 442 762 724 601 718 707 187 576 464 138 455 620 585 489 222 378 280 427 454 392 385 1342 913 527 767 577 501 396 440 443 376 260 271 114 126 223 271 293 335 306 106 65 97 283 229 432 KY OR OK CT IO MS AR KS UT NV NM WV NE ID HI ME NH RI MT DL SD AK ND VT WY 43.39 38.33 37.52 35.71 30.46 29.66 29.17 28.53 27.64 27.01 20.59 18.53 18.28 15.68 13.60 13.29 13.16 10.53 9.89 8.98 8.15 7.10 6.72 6.26 5.63

Suicides Homicides Table 5 Table 4 of of GPP GPP study study

404 376 376 110 177 256 266 210 275 289 204 210 106 182 37 95 102 30 141 43 65 107 56 66 83 125 60 131 98 34 205 132 68 27 90 76 47 41 12 13 17 17 45 30

Data Source: America Under the Gun, by Arkadi Gerney, Chelsea Parsons, and Charles Posner (Click here). The two letter US Postal abbreviation for each state is used and the data has been sorted by decreasing population to aid in the preparation of the x-y plots. If we ignore Detroit city (304 out of 494 homicides, about 60%, and so will distort the scale of the graph), a general upward trend in homicides is observed with increasing population. Detroit City is no longer an exception, however, when it comes to suicides. A PERFECT linearity is observed for suicides with increasing population, described by the best-fit equation y = 4.669x + 1.028 with r2 = 0.9778, see Figure 1.
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The firearms-suicides data for Michigan counties, including Detroit city, reveals a strong correlation with population levels, with a nearly PERFECT value for the correlation coefficient (r), or coefficient of determination (r2). There is considerably more scatter in the graph for homicides.

Homicides Suicides Unintentional Unknown Legal Intervention

Michigan Average Annual Firearms incidents (1999-2003) breakdown The nearly PEREFCT correlation between firearms-related suicides and the county population implies a near PERFECT homogeneity of factors contributing to (firearm) suicides across population sizes and therefore the need to more effectively address this tragic and preventable cause of selfinflicted violence and deaths. In other words, the work function for suicides (see discussion in Ref. [1] in particular, and also in Refs. [2,3]), is essentially constant across county population sizes.

Breakdown of Overall Firearms deaths for MA and WA

State
Overall Homicides Suicides Others

Massachusetts (2010)
270 126 138 6

Washington (2010)
609 114 404 91

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Table 2b: Firearm Homicides vs. Overall Firearms Deaths

State
California (CA) New Jersey (NJ) Massachusetts (MA) New York (NY) Connecticut (CT) Hawaii (HI) Maryland (MD) Rhode Island (RI) Illinois (IL) Pennsylvania (PA) Michigan (MI) North Carolina (NC) Colorado (CO) Oregon (OR) Washington (WA) Alabama (AL) Minnesota (MN) Delaware (DL) Virginia (VA)

Overall Brady Firearms Score deaths(2010) GPP Table 2

81 72 66 62 58 50 45 44 35 26 25 16 15 15 15 14 14 13 12 2935 456 270 1011 209 45 538 49 1064 1307 1076 1123 555 458 609 782 365 88 875

Firearms Homicides (2010) GPP Table 4

1342 260 126 527 98 n/a 306 17 577 501 440 376 97 60 114 283 65 45 271

Homicides % of Overall firearms deaths

45.7 57.0 46.7 52.1 46.9 n/a 56.9 34.7 54.2 38.3 40.9 33.5 17.5 13.1 18.7 36.2 17.8 51.1 31.0

Data Sources: America Under the Gun Report (April 2013) from Center for American Progress and the Brady Campaign for Prevention of Gun Violence (2011 Scorecard); see Refs. [15-17]. Massachusetts and Washington, on the Atlantic and Pacific coast, respectively, have virtually the same population. The number of homicides is nearly the same but the overall firearms-related death is higher for WA, with the difference being entirely due to suicides. The idea of a work function was first conceived by Einstein, in 1905, to explain the photoelectric effect, see Refs. [4-6]. The work function is the name given by Einstein to the nonzero intercept c in the photoelectric law. In this law, x is the frequency of light, the slope h is the Planck constant, and y is the maximum kinetic energy of the electron produced (when light of frequency f shines on the surface of a metal). The nonzero c (or the work function W) tells us something about the difficulty of producing a free electron when light
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shines on the surface of a metal. The radiant light, which Einstein considered to be a stream of photons with energy , must have the minimum energy W = hf0 where h is the Planck constant, f0 is the cut-off frequency, and W is the threshold energy of the photon. The photoelectric law thus yields a family of K-f parallels with the general equation K = W = hf W = h(f f0), with K being the maximum energy of the electron that is ejected from the metal.

600

Firearms-related Suicides, y

500

400

y = 8.8x + 33.41 Alabama-Wyoming line The two extreme points by population

300

200

100

y = 8.54x 33.66 Kansas-Delaware line Nearly perfect parallel See Li and Na lines in Millikans experiments

0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

State Population, x [in 100,000s]

Figure 5: One of ten gun violence indicators in the Gerney, Parsons, and Posner study - the firearms-related suicides deaths - is considered here. The number of suicides increases with increasing population following the linear law y = hx + c where the constant h and c can be determined readily by simply considering the two states with the lowest and the highest population in our data set. This yields the Alabama-Wyoming line along which fall the data for a large number of states. The Kansas-Delaware data fall on a line that is very nearly a perfect parallel. The differences in the slope are quite small and similar to that observed
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by Millikan in the photoelectric experiments with lithium and sodium. This has been discussed in detail in Ref. [1]. The varying suicide rate that we observe is due to the nonzero intercept c, or the work function as it applies to this gun violence outcome (a suicide). . Likewise, the batting statistics of a baseball player also reveals a work function, similar to the work function in physics, see refs. [7-9]. This has to do with the difficulty of producing hits (or home runs). The work function is now related to the missing hits, or the minimum At Bats (AB) needed to produce hits (or home runs). These points have been discussed more fully in the companion articles [1-3]. The game-by-game batting data, for a baseball player like the legendary Babe Ruth, can be shown to fall along a family of parallels with the general equation y = hx + c, with y being the number of hits, x the number of At Bats, and with the slope h = 1 and the nonzero c being related to the number of missed hits corresponding to each At Bats x. The work function in the gun violence, the name that has been given to the nonzero intercept c, also tells us something about the difficulty of the achieving the gun violence outcome, such a firearms-related suicide. As discussed in detail in Ref. [1], the gun violence data also moves along a system of parallels. This is illustrated again in Figure 5 here where we consider only the firearms suicides data for the states with the smaller population (under 5 million). The constancy of the work function (the nonzero intercept) for several states is an manifestation of the remarkable homogeneity of factors that result in the gun violence outcome known as the firearms suicide. These remarkable findings also imply that a lot more can clearly be done with more effective gun laws, and also with health care initiatives to address mental health issues, to reduce this tragic and preventable cause of selfinflicted violence, see Refs. [10-13]. It is hoped that our lawmakers and legal professionals will pay heed and work to examine more critically the reasons for the remarkable homogeneity observed here and what aspect of the gun laws need to strengthened to reduce the work function, or the incidence of firearms-related suicides, not only in Michigan, but across the country, and even across nations.
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Although I have not yet fully studied all of the suicides data, my experience over the past 15 years of analysis a wide variety of such data (Ref. [14]) convinces me and allows me to make a bold statement that the results being reported here for Michigan are NOT isolated and will be widely observed if we study such data across different states, and also across different nations. Hence, this brief and urgent note.

The following comments were posted on the blog,

Gun Control 2013: Suicide Stats Are Irrelevant to Gun Control Policy

Matt MacBradaigh in Politics, Guns 1 week ago

http://www.policymic.com/articles/38391/gun-control-2013-suicide-statsare-irrelevant-to-gun-control-policy/532857
The Discussion

Vj Laxmanan 7 minutes ago (around 2 PM, on May 14, 2013)

Dear Matt: I hope I can share these findings here. As I have continued my research, I have come to the shocking conclusion that SUICIDE STATS ARE THE ONLY STATS THAT ARE RELEVANT to the national gun violence debate. THERE IS AN UNHERALDED EPIDEMIC OF SUICIDES ACROSS THIS NATION, LIKE THE CARNAGE ON THE HIGHWAYS IN THE 1960s, which forced Congress to pass the National Traffic Safety Act. Likewise, we need a National

Gun Safety Act, see more in ...

Vj Laxmanan 5 minutes ago

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The following document describes my findings on the EPIDEMIC level of suicides across this country.

1 Replies
Vj Laxmanan 18 seconds ago Don't know what happened, here...

Vj Laxmanan 18 seconds ago

Don't know what happened, here's the link. http://www.scribd.com/doc/141451669/Gun-Violence-in-America-Americans-Are-KillingThemselves-NOT-Each-Other-Themselves-Not-Each-Other-Across-States I am issuing a national suicide ALERT !!! Please join me. The Suicides/Homicides ratio reveals Americans are killing themselves, not each other, across states. Pardon my Texan (not French), these idiots are just blowing their own brains off, not each othr

Vj Laxmanan

Dear All: I have just uploaded the following document where I have discussed the link between the Brady Campaign Score for various states and the firearms-related death rates, reported in the recent study America Under the Gun. http://www.scribd.com/doc/141292101/The-Brady-Campaign-State-Ranking-and-the-FirearmsDeath-Rates-Einstein-s-Work-Function-Reappears Please also take a look at Appendix 2 and Table 2 highlighting suicides and homicides

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Reference List
1. Brady Campaign State Rankings and the Firearms-related Death Rates: Einsteins Work Function Reappears, Published May 13, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/141292101/The-Brady-Campaign-StateRanking-and-the-Firearms-Death-Rates-Einstein-s-Work-FunctionReappears 2. Comparison of the Strong and Weak Gun Law States and the Ten States with Highest Level of Gun Violence: Least Squares Analysis of the Data, Published May 10, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/140536622/Comparison-of-the-Strong-andWeak-Gun-law-States-and-the-Ten-States-With-Highest-Levels-of-GunViolence-Least-Squares-Analysis-of-the-Data 3. Gun Death Statistics and the Method of Least Squares and the Forgotten Property of a Straight Line, Published May 8, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/140152581/Gun-Death-Statistics-and-theMethod-of-Least-Squares-and-the-Forgotten-Property-of-a-Straight-line 4. Einsteins Photoelectric Equation and the Electromotive Force, by R. A. Millikan, Phys. Rev. 1916, Vol. VII, No. 1, Second Series, pp. 18-32. http://www.ffn.ub.es/luisnavarro/nuevo_maletin/Millikan_1916_1.pdf 5. A Direct Photoelectric Determination of Plancks h, R. A. Millikan, Phys. Rev. 1916, vol. VII, No. 3, pp. 355-390. http://mapageweb.umontreal.ca/leonelli/PHY3320/millikan.pdf 6. The Electron and the Light Quanta from the Experimental Point of View, by Robert A. Millikan, Nobel lecture, May 23, 1924, see pages 61 to 63. The graph for sodium is on page 63. 7. Babe Ruths 1923 Batting Statistics and Einsteins Work Function, Published April 17, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/136489156/BabeRuth-s-1923-Batting-Statistics-and-Einstein-s-Work-Function 8. Babe Ruth Batting Statistics and Einsteins Work Function, To be Published April 17, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/136556738/BabeRuth-Batting-Statistics-and-Einstein-s-Work-Function 9. The Method of Least Squares: Predicting the Batting Average of a Baseball Player (Hamilton in 2013), Published May 7, 2013,
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10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/139924317/The-Method-of-Least-SquaresPredicting-the-Batting-Average-of-a-Baseball-Player-Hamilton-in-2013 Guns and Suicide: A fatal link, Spring 2008, http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/ Study by the Harvard School of Public Health, of all the 50 U.S. states, reveals a powerful link between rates of firearm ownership and suicides. Means Matter, Suicides, Guns and Public Health, http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/ Reducing access to lethal means saves lives. Gun crime statistics by US state: latest data, Datablog, Posted by Simon Rogers, December 17, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-usstate Total firearm murders and the firearm murder rates (per 100,000 population) for all states is given here. Gun Control 2013: Suicide Stats Irrelevant to Gun Control Policy, Matt MacBradaigh, in Politics, May 6, 2013, http://www.policymic.com/articles/38391/gun-control-2013-suicidestats-are-irrelevant-to-gun-control-policy Bibliography, Articles on Extension of Plancks Ideas and Einsteins Ideas beyond physics, Compiled on April 16, 2013, http://www.scribd.com/doc/136492067/Bibliography-Articles-on-theExtension-of-Planck-s-Ideas-and-Einstein-s-Ideas-on-Energy-Quantum-totopics-Outside-Physics-by-V-Laxmanan Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 2011 Scorecards, http://www.bradycampaign.me/sites/default/files/2011_Brady_Campaig n_State_Scorecard_Rankings.pdf American Under the Gun, http://www.americanprogress.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/AmericaUnderTheGun.pdf Full report here. A 50 State Analysis of Gun Violence and its Link to Weak State Gun Laws, by Arkadi Gerney, Chelsea Parsons, and Charles Posner, April 4, 2013, Center for American Progress Report, Brief discussion here, http://truth-out.org/news/item/15524

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18. Does Speed Kill? Forgotten US Highway Deaths in the 1950s and 1960s, August 3, 2012, http://www.scribd.com/doc/101982715/DoesSpeed-Kill-Forgotten-US-Highway-Deaths-in-1950s-and-1960s 19. The Effect of Speed Limits on Fatalities and Texas Proofing of Vehicles, August 3, 2012, http://www.scribd.com/doc/101983375/Effect-of-Speed-Limits-onFatalities-Texas-Proofing-of-Vehicles 20. National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Traffic_and_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_Act

21. Top 10 Presidential influences on the auto industry, http://www.forbes.com/pictures/ehmk45ielk/6-highway-safety-act-andnational-traffic-motor-vehicle-safety-act-1966-lyndon-johnson-2/ 22. US Department of Transportation: Office of the Historian, http://ntl.bts.gov/historian/chronology.htm

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About the author V. Laxmanan, Sc. D.

The author obtained his Bachelors degree (B. E.) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Poona and his Masters degree (M. E.), also in Mechanical Engineering, from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, followed by a Masters (S. M.) and Doctoral (Sc. D.) degrees in Materials Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. He then spent his entire professional career at leading US research institutions (MIT, Allied Chemical Corporate R & D, now part of Honeywell, NASA, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), and General Motors Research and Development Center in Warren, MI). He holds four patents in materials processing, has co-authored two books and published several scientific papers in leading peer-reviewed international journals. His expertise includes developing simple mathematical models to explain the behavior of complex systems. While at NASA and CWRU, he was responsible for developing material processing experiments to be performed aboard the space shuttle and developed a simple mathematical model to explain the growth Christmas-tree, or snowflake, like structures (called dendrites) widely observed in many types of liquid-to-solid phase transformations (e.g., freezing of all commercial metals and alloys, freezing of water, and, yes, production of snowflakes!). This led to a simple model to explain the growth of dendritic structures in both the groundbased experiments and in the space shuttle experiments. More recently, he has been interested in the analysis of the large volumes of data from financial and economic systems and has developed what may be called the Quantum Business Model (QBM). This extends (to financial and economic systems) the mathematical arguments used by Max Planck to develop quantum physics using the analogy Energy = Money, i.e., energy in physics is like money in economics. Einstein applied Plancks ideas to describe the photoelectric effect (by treating light as being composed of particles called photons, each with the fixed quantum of energy conceived by Planck). The mathematical law deduced by Planck, referred to here as the generalized power-exponential law, might
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actually have many applications far beyond blackbody radiation studies where it was first conceived. Einsteins photoelectric law is a simple linear law and was deduced from Plancks non-linear law for describing blackbody radiation. It appears that financial and economic systems can be modeled using a similar approach. Finance, business, economics and management sciences now essentially seem to operate like astronomy and physics before the advent of Kepler and Newton. Finally, during my professional career, I also twice had the opportunity and great honor to make presentations to two Nobel laureates: first at NASA to Prof. Robert Schrieffer (1972 Physics Nobel Prize), who was the Chairman of the Schrieffer Committee appointed to review NASAs space flight experiments (following the loss of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986) and second at GM Research Labs to Prof. Robert Solow (1987 Nobel Prize in economics), who was Chairman of Corporate Research Review Committee, appointed by GM corporate management.

Cover page of AirTran 2000 Annual Report

Can you see that plane flying above the tall tree tops that make a nearly perfect circle? It requires a great deal of imagination to see and to photograph it.

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