Couldn't Resist

From Monica Calabi via Junk Charts via Wired. Of course, this is prone to the dimensional problem we've seen before.

Wow, It's Hot

From xkcd, a timeline of the earth's temperature from 20,000 BCE to the present, best seen here.

When people say "the climate has changed before" these are the kind of changes they're talking about.

Since the last ice age glaciation, at no time has the climate changed faster than in the last few generations!

Maybe This Information is Beautiful, It's Just Not Accurate

This is an image from the e-book Information is Beautiful from the site of the same name. But they've made the same mistake that has long served to help people learn How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff.  The graphic below, from Huff's book, shows the comparison of bags of money representing an average weekly wages from two countries. The one on the right earning twice as much as the one on the left. Showing how to lie, the bags are drawn so that the on the right is twice as tall as the one on the left, but this doesn't give us the correct visual image, since the graphic artist has doubled both the height and the width to produce the image on the right. The resulting visual impression is that the bag on the right is four times the one on the right. A perfect image to mislead.

Now the graphic from Information is Beautiful purports to represent the percentage of children in poverty. On the left is shown a small shadow silhouette of a young child with arms raised that represents 2%, the percentage of children in poverty in Denmark. Compare this with the larger silhouette for Germany representing 10%. Even in this flat 2-d outline more than 5 of the Denmark outlines could fit in the Germany outline.  The problem, of course, is that a graphic artist has lied again and doubled both the height and width of the silhouettes to represent these numbers. This distorts any comparisons that could be made with these data. And it gets worse, since we are to understand these are images of 3-dimensional children!

I recall decades ago this, now classic graphic, when it appeared in the Washington Post. The same mistake of displaying data using the same error with the same methods (compare the Eisenhower dollar with the Carter dollar). You would think....

Sunday, Sunday

Along with reading the Sunday newspaper, CBS Sunday Morning is a favorite in our household. Click on the video above for a short report on a streaming pay TV customer satisfaction survey conducted by JD Power. The report mentions four categories: "cord cutters", those who have cancelled TV service, "cord nevers", those who have never subscribed to pay TV and only subscribe to a streaming video service, "cord shavers", those who still subscribe but now to a downgraded TV service, and "cord stackers", those who keep pay TV but also use streaming.  From the report:

The inaugural study measures overall satisfaction among customers who have used a subscription- or transaction-based streaming video service within the past six months. The study measures customer satisfaction by examining six key measures (listed in order of importance): performance and reliability; content; cost of service; ease of use; communication; and customer service. Scores for each measure are reflected in an index based on a 1,000-point scale.

The measures for "cutters", "nevers", "shavers", and "stackers" are 802, 807, 822, and 826. Here is a frame from late in the video that reports on the right most bar "stackers" as it relates to the other categories."

It's clear that that Sunday Morning is in sore need of knowledgeable graphics editors. Perhaps their artists make their charts telegenic by filling them up with what we would call "chart junk", but in ignoring the proper representation of the data, they are presenting false and misleading images. The numbers are said to be represented here, are again, 802, 807, 822, and 826. The second bar from left almost looks twice as tall as the left-most bar and not a bar that should only be about 0.6% taller. The third bar from the left looks about 3 times taller than the left-most bar and it should only be about 2.5% taller. Finally, the right-most "cord stackers" bar should be under 3% taller, not over 4 times taller! Yes, they give a grid background to judge the sizes, but they are misleading sizes to judge. The 'smiley' satisfaction faces are probably the most reliable description of the data: The satisfaction scores are amazingly the same. From smallest to largest they vary by less than 3%.

Here are the data shown on the graph and then a more accurate rendering (without the chart junk).

Not much difference in satisfaction across all type customers.

Timely Stats

From an analysis by RAINN the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network.

Sometimes Charts Don't Lie

Dave Blazek's Loose Parts.

Changing Wants

Research in the Journal of Family Issues by Boxer et al. was illustrated by Max Roser at Our World of Data in the graphic above. From survey results that date back to the 1930s, college students ranked the importance of 18 traits of a prospective mate, via datavizblog, via techinsider.

Here are the ranking results from Boxer et al.:

Their research questions wondered if more recent surveys from 1985, 1996, and 2008 showed increasing importance to men of "good financial prospect." It had only partial support. Their next question wondered if there was increasing importance among women for "good cook and housekeeper" and "desire for home and children". It had no support. Finally, they wondered if there would be decreasing importance among women for "good financial prospect". It had no support.

The graphic above takes their widest view of mate preferences where "mutual attraction - love", "education - intelligence", "sociability", "good lucks", and "good financial prospect" have increased in importance since 1939 for both sexes. "Desire for home, children" has increased for men but decreased for women. And for men "ambition and industriousness" has dropped since 1939. "Chastity" has decreased in importance for both sexes.

Semester's End

It's the end of the semester and I saw this Post-It Note graphic that shows exactly how many people, especially students, approach an assignment's deadline. From Instagrammer Insta-Chaz via Visual News.

Happy Deathday Will?

In honor of William Shakepeare's 400th deathday, An infographic from Raconteur showing a timeline of the World's Greatest Storytellers (compete with local magnification) as surveyed by authors, journalists, writers, and students. The size of the bubble corresponds to the number of votes. Shakespeare looms large overall as the greatest story teller of the all. Happy Death-day Will.

(Earlier I posted Happy Birthday wishes, misled as others were on the web, but I was wrong. It is Will's Deathday and I corrected my posting, although I thought only Saints were to be remembered on their Death-day. Shakespeare was a genius, but I don't think many would call him a Saint).

Pipe Down

Here is a data comparison of the size of pipelines for fluids delivered or consumed in the US. But a Mayo, Maple Syrup, and Nail Polish mix sounds awful! From xkcd.

No words

Hungry Thanksgiving

Above is a map from Five-Thirty-Eight's survey of Thanksgiving eating traditions nationwide. It shows the most disproportionately common Thanksgiving side dish by region. I grew up in Florida, but we never got on the mac and cheese Thanksgiving bandwagon. Likewise, living now in Maryland, squash doesn't make it on our plates. Our family seems to match the midwest more, with green bean casserole and rolls (not biscuits). And for dessert we are looking forward to pumpkin, pecan, and apple pie. You can download their survey data for your own analysis here.

Painting with Emotions

Graphic designer Giestas mapped his emotions to colors and published them in vertical strips over time. Volume 1 displays his hourly emotions in a single day.

 Volume 2 displays the emotions he expressed on the top half of the page and emotions he felt on the bottom half.

 Volume 3 displays three horizontal strips of emotions expected, felt at the time, and remembered 24 hours later.

The complete mapping is shown in only a few images that make it difficult to see what emotions are in the lower left hand corner. I have attempted to decipher them more fully into the following image.

 We've seen a graphic of emotions from an earlier post about the Pixar movie Inside Out.

Fall Foliage Map

Here is an interactive 2015 USA Fall Foliage Map from website SmokyMountains.com.
Here it is set for the coming week of September 19. Perfect for planning any Fall leaf peeping trips. the site also explains why and how the leaves change color. Enjoy.

Puzzling World

Here is a busy graphic representing the composition of the world's economy. Countries are given polygonal sections proportional to the relative size of their economies. Each sector is divided into three smaller regions: Most lightly colored is Agriculture, somewhat darker is Industry, darker yet, the sub-segment that is greatest for most countries, is Services. Starting with the largest (US) the polygons seem to be arranged in a rough Pareto-chart fashion from largest to smallest in a counter-clockwise fashion. Although, individual countries are hard to locate, those of similar size contributions are somewhat easy to compare. I found it fun to puzzle out comparisons that I found surprising, for example, US industry has about the same area as China's. Mathew Yglesias from Vox points out others:

You can see some cool things here.

• For example, compare the US and China. Our economy is much larger than theirs, but our industrial sectors are comparable in size, and China’s agriculture sector looks to be a little bit larger. Services are what drive the entire gap.

• The UK and France have similarly sized overall economies, but agriculture is a much bigger slice of the French pie.

• For all that Russia gets played up as some kind of global menace, its economy produces less than Italy. Put all the different European countries together, and Russia looks pathetic.

• You often hear the phrase “China and India,” but you can see here that the two Asian giants are in very different shape economically.

• The only African nation on this list, South Africa, has a smaller economy than Colombia.

This graphic has gotten criticism as being too busy, too unorganized, and too difficult to make comparison, among others. But I do like the puzzle-it-out quality of the graphic. It makes us work a little to understand and make comparisons. I especially like the quote from Andrew Gelman at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science:

Paradoxically, the best thing about this graph may also be its worst: Its tricky, puzzle-like characteristic (it even looks like some sort of hi-tech jigsaw puzzle) makes it hard to read, hard to follow, but at the same time gratifying for the reader who goes to the trouble of figuring it out.

From howmuch, via Vox, via SM,CS and SS. 

Circles of Coal

 

Graphic from the print edition of the Washington Post on August 2, 2015 showing what proportion of a state's total electricity that comes from the burning of coal. Each state's circle represents 100% of the states electricity production. The inner black circle represents the percentage of the total electricity that is produced by coal. This is a nice display, but correctly interpreting such percentages from circles is difficult. Assessing "a lot" or "a little" is somewhat easy, but even correctly divining the 50% value, is something many find difficult and even counter-intuitive.

High school geometry likely taught you that an inner circle half the size of an outer circle is found by inscribing a square inside the outer circle and then inscribing an inner circle inside the square. This inner circle will have half the area of the outer circle.

The geometry is correct, but visually interpreting this black circle as half the area of the outer circle can be difficult. Shaded areas of squares might have worked better in the coal graphic. The Washington Post has more maps on other methods of electricity generation here.

Belated Shark Week

Sharks seem to be a beach menace this summer from North Carolina beaches, South African surf competitions, to TV movies.

But for some perspective, above is a dramatic, graphic comparison of the number of people killed by sharks per year and number of sharks killed by people PER HOUR. About 12 people are killed by sharks each year, and over 11,000 sharks are killed PER HOUR by people. The image above is just the beginning of a long graphic scroll of shark death. Here is the bottom of the graphic:

Via: visualnews.

Of course some folks have devised their own shark protection.

A Weekly View of Your Life

Here is one of last year's posts from the site Wait But Why. Tim Urban has shown in a table of boxes, a typical life span in years, months, and above in weeks. Viewed this way, you have to wonder: What did I do this past week?

E-Evil Almonds

Almonds have lately become the enemy of freshwater, thanks to comparisons published by a Mother Jones article, "California's Almonds Suck as Much Water Annually as Los Angeles Uses in Three Years". It seems we should all feel guilty for enjoying them. Prompted by these surprising comparisons, the LATimes maps out other foods "From steak to mangoes, here are some water-hogging foods."

Amazingly, they left out almonds! Nathan Yau at Flowingdata puts almonds on the map saying:

The LA Times article quotes about one gallon of water per almond. According to the Google, the average almond weighs 1.2 grams, which translates to about 24 almonds per ounce. Therefore, 24 gallons of water per ounce, placing almonds between mangos and asparagus from a per ounce perspective. 

Looking at this graphic,  it's perhaps beef that we should stay away from!

True Size of Africa

Although not strictly a statistical concept, I very much like these sort of comparisons. They startle your expectations. Via Kai Krause.