Black Friday marks the kickoff of the holiday shopping season and generally is the busiest shopping day of the year. Last year nearly 150 million Americans went shopping on Black Friday, spending more than $57 billion.
At Silk, we often create visualizations from data. Silk is a place to explore and visualize our world through data. Recently my colleague at Silk, Alice Corona, analyzed Black Friday mayhem data, then transformed it into some eye-opening visualizations.
1. The most dangerous place to shop on Black Friday: Perhaps the most intriguing of Corona's findings looks at which retail locations have had the most injuries and deaths on Black Friday. According to the data, the largest percentage of reported injuries occurred in a Walmart. This makes America's largest retailer the most dangerous place to shop on Black Friday.
2. A year to remember: Since 2006 there have been 89 reported Black Friday injuries. In 2011 a record 46 people were injured during Black Friday-related events.
3. Weapon of choice: As toy sales surge during the holidays, apparently so do sales for pepper spray. Pepper spray proved to be the weapon of choice on this crazy day of fighting for the best deals on stocking stuffers. We counted 41 cases of reported pepper spray incidents since 2006.
4. Angry mobs: OK, maybe they aren't angry, but they're certainly very determined mobs of shoppers. Since 2006, 19 people have been injured and one man lost his life in a stampede of eager shoppers.
5. Guns:
So much for that holiday cheer. As NBC's Miami affiliate reported, in 2012 two people were shot outside a Tallahassee Walmart over a parking space.
This post also appeared at GenYize.com.