[rovolo]

I'm not sure which of these two points you're trying to make:

1) These specific counties could be flukes because of their small population.

We can account for that by making multiple observations--i.e. look at multiple years of data--and seeing if the counties change rank. The visualization has yearly data for 1980-2014, and the specified counties are consistently high compared to the national average

https://vizhub.healthdata.org/subnational/usa

2) The 'rural' component of these counties isn't necessarily a factor, since the counties with lowest rates may be rural as well.

A bit of searching turns up a clear correlation between population density and suicide:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/How-population-density-a...

[koonsolo]

I was trying to make point 1, but you definitely showed this is not the case.

That last graph is a really nice one, as it shows more variance on low populations, but on average still way higher than on high populations.

Thanks for the clarification! :)