“” [November issue] references the tragic case of Sheri Sangji, who died in 2009 from injuries sustained in an accident while working as a lab assistant at UCLA. According to the article, 129 chemical safety incidents occurred in laboratories during the eight years before Sangji's death, and 132 incidents occurred in the ten years after her death. This comparison suggests virtually no difference in chemical safety at laboratories between the two periods. However, 129 incidents in eight years cannot be compared to 132 incidents in ten years. By normalizing the eight-year period to ten years (129/8x10=161), we arrive at a more useful comparison. As a result, there is an estimated drop of approximately 18 percent from the 10 years before to the 10 years after. There is a similar misrepresentation in “” [December issue], which compares incidents, total injuries, and total fatalities over two time periods. Period one spans 25 years (1980–2005) and period two spans 11 years (2006–2017). The figure accompanying the article incorrectly suggests that there is a substantial drop in all categories. In fact, the presented count data cannot be compared because the time periods are different; there are different denominators. A much better approach would be to compare counts per year. According to the data presented in the article, 11.2 combustible dust incidents occurred per year between 1980 and 2005, and 9.5 occurred per year between 2006 and 2017—a decrease of 15 percent. The number of injuries per year fell from 28.7 in period one to 27.5 in period two, a 4 percent decrease. These numbers suggest a very different picture, with small decreases in the number of combustible incidents and injuries—although fatalities per year increased 13 percent (from 4.8 to 5.4). Also, I suggest showing scatter plots with trend lines, because individual years may drastically influence the results. I do like the “By the Numbers” articles, and I hope that will continue publishing them.