Two things:<p>1. Perhaps I missed his explanation, but for two of those, it sounded like cause of death had not been determined yet.<p>2. Can someone run through the math here for me to indicate that this is statistically significant? According to Suicide.org, suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for college students, and thousands kill themselves every year, so doesn't it seem like sooner or later, several of them would happen within a few months of each other on the same campus?<p>I don't mean to sound insensitive at all. I'm sure the families and friends of the deceased are devastated, but I just wonder if this is really a pattern or just an unfortunate coincidence.
I graduated from Caltech. The suicide rate there used to be worse, especially among incoming freshmen who, after being in the top 0.1% of their classes, suddenly find themselves normally distributed for the first time and getting not A+'s. This is why incoming freshmen take their first quarter pass/fail and their second quarter with "shadow" grades.<p>The school itself is very challenging, much more so than even the closest competitor (MIT). Students there are generally exhausted from working hard and playing hard and there is a culture of depression and self-loathing there. I was generally surprised to not see more suicides there to be honest.
The high school I attended (10 years ago) has had 4 students commit suicide in the last 6 months. Western Heights College in Geelong, Australia has a student population of around half of Caltech's.<p>This has made major headlines in the Australian press and has raised concerns about the education systems ability to deal with student depression and the effects of it. Copy cat behaviour has been suggested also.<p>Unfortunately, apart from the obvious grief the students have experienced, they have also had to put up with TV crews trying to enter the school and taking every opportunity to speak with students who are quite likely not equipped to deal with the difficult circumstances they are faced with.
"Alan Turing took his life by a poisoned apple"<p>- isn't there some story about the fact that because Apple has a bite out of it's logo, that it's in fact a tribute to Turing - or is that just a myth?
Remember Freakonomics? According to the book, suicides are contagious. After widely reported suicides the rate of freak car accidents that kill only the driver goes up.