A mean center map identifies the geographic center for a set of features. The utilization of a map that displays the mean center of skin cancer for the years 1950-1994 further supported my hypothesis that geographic location is having a diminishing importance on the contraction of skin cancer. The ability to compare and contrast general directional movement of diseases and cancer enables scientists to quickly prove, or disprove theories. I, for example, while not being a scientist thought that perhaps the drastic northward movement of skin cancer mortality was perhaps attributed to increasing populations of retiring “snowbirds” who, having spent many years of their retirement in the south, die in the north. Yet this notion was quickly disproved when the mean center of All Cancer revealed that there is a general southward trend of mortality rates. Furthermore, it shows the diverging direction of female and male rates, with male rates having a greater directional change.
A sudden drastic movement of a disease/cancer mortality rate, identified by the movement of its mean center, could assist scientists in tracking how environmental catastrophes affect the health of a population. Mapping the leukemia mean center, for example, of the Ukraine/USSR following Chernobyl would most likely result in an extreme jump towards the origin of the nuclear explosion.