
People of class drink alcohol  - iamelgringo
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/05/people-of-class-drink-alcohol/
======
mannicken
Please note that some of the graphs there start with 50% as original y-axis.
It creates an appearance of males drinking twice as much as females, for
example.

~~~
tumult
I guess if you're the kind of person who likes looking at bars instead of
reading the text that gives them meaning as well.

I think a floor set at number like 0.5 and with a linear scale is pretty
reasonable for readability, unless you're a lout and ignore those little
letters that tell you what things actually are.

~~~
chancho
WTF is the point of a graph if you have to read the fine print to avoid
misinterpreting it? Why not just use a table? A graph is supposed to convey
the relative magnitudes of the data points, not just their ranking. If I just
wanted to show who drank more than whom I would just list them in order.

Looking at these graphs you'd think that: Almost nobody in the south drinks;
The vast majority of blacks do not drink; Catholics are twice as likely to
drink as Protestants.

And so on, when in fact these are all false conclusions. The real conclusion,
which you would easily get from properly scaled graphs, is that _the majority
of people drink across almost all demographic groups_.

If you blame me for drawing false conclusions from such graphs I blame the
shitty fucking graphs for being misleading. I mean, they don't all even start
at 50%. One starts at %40 and one at %0. Seriously, these graphs are garbage.

~~~
jey
Er, so all graphs of temperature should start at absolute zero? It's absurd to
expect all graphs to start at zero -- the point of a bar graph is to show
relative comparisons, and the whole point of the labels on the axes is to
relate the graph to an absolute scale. You even admit this, "[a] graph is
supposed to convey the relative magnitudes of the data points" -- Exactly, and
so the graph should be scaled in a way that efficiently conveys the _relative_
information. I apologize for the ad hominem, but this is just serious PEBKAC:
you need to learn to read graphs. The mistaken conclusions you arrived at
could have been avoided if you paid attention to the labels.

Yes, a poorly made graph can make a tiny effect look huge, e.g. if it was the
case that 99% of people drank, and the graph was just plotting variation
within the remaining 1%, that could be pretty misleading. This is _yet
another_ reason that the consumers of information should pay attention to the
labels and understand what the _real_ message is from the data. Don't expect
the creators of the graph to present the data in the "fairest" way (whatever
that is); instead it's our responsibility to think critically and make sure we
understand what's really going on. The creator of the graph will naturally act
to advance his own interests.

tl;dr: It's a mistake to consider the labels to be "fine print".

~~~
corruption
You are both missing the forest for the trees. Graph axes should scale in
proportion to observed variance of the statistic being shown, automatically
creating a "natural scale". The magnitude of the scale is of course
proportional to the error in the measurement(s) you are showing, it has
nothing to do with absolute numbers.

"The creator of the graph will naturally act to advance his own interests" ->
"The biased creator of a graph with too much riding on his hypothesis will
surreptitiously act to advance his own interests". People who do this are not
worth listening to.

~~~
jey
Fully agreed/conceded. I was addressing the graph consumer's point of view.
There's definitely good practices the graph creator can follow to most
effectively/honestly convey the information contained in the data.

~~~
Retric
When I see a graph that start's at some random point on the Y axis I assume
the person is extremely biased and instantly ignore what they are saying. If I
don't see error bars on data points I assume they have zero idea how accurate
there information is.

Unfortunately I suspect that this approach is less common among the under
educated because trying to create misleading charts is vary common.

------
mahmud
In Australia, people of all classes drink like they have just crossed the
Mojave desert, barefoot, after escaping Alcatraz.

~~~
bergkampf
According to this listing, Australia is not even in the top 20: Luxembourg,
Ireland and Hungary seem to be the top three.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption)

~~~
adulau
I'm wondering if the article in Wikipedia is really based on "alcohol
consumption" and not Alcohol reported to be sold in the country?

There is a clear reason why Luxembourg is on top. The taxes on alcohol is
(very) low in Luxembourg and a lot of people from the countries closed to
Luxembourg (Belgium, France and Germany) are buying their alcohol there. We
don't forget the travellers (Luxembourg is a crossroad in EU) making a stop in
Luxembourg...

~~~
qq66
That explanation could work for Luxembourg. But Ireland?

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harpastum
This article seems to be claiming that people with a larger vocabulary (as
tested by a vocab test) are more likely to drink, not 'people of class'.

~~~
rosshudgens
This article seems to be claiming that intelligence = class.

~~~
endtime
Actually, it's implicitly claiming that large vocabulary is the same as class.

~~~
yalurker
Which may sound shocking, even offensive at first. However, the correlation
between vocabulary and socio-economic class is a very concrete result of many
other studies, such that it is a reasonable thing to leave implicit in this
case.

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silentbicycle
Nah, they just score higher on a vocabulary test because they're articulating
extra crisply.

Working in a public library is a good way to dispel illusions about drinking
being classy, by the way. We could always tell when some of the veterans got
their monthly checks...

Also: Bike thieves _do_ suck, and these graphs would send Tufte on a crying
jag.

------
tmsh
Ironically, I learned a new word: 'confound'
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding> ). And then I realized that the
last chart has confounds. Intelligence and vocabulary are correlated, but
worth differentiating in this case.

A higher vocabulary is pretty strongly correlated with being well-read. I
think we can trust that. And being well-read implies being exposed to
different things (though it is by no means the only way to be exposed to
different things -- i.e., those who are well-read [subset operator] those who
are exposed to a wide variety of things.

But those who are exposed to a wide variety of things are highly correlated
with those who wish to take risks _to be_ exposed to new things. And the
latter group seems pretty well correlated with those who drink.

Note, intelligence only 'lurks' near vocabulary.

~~~
ramchip
_being well-read implies being exposed to different things [...] But those who
are exposed to a wide variety of things are highly correlated with those who
wish to take risks to be exposed to new things_

I don't follow this reasoning. Being well-read implies being exposed to a lot
of different books, not a lot of different activities. In my experience,
people that read a lot are not people who take risks to be exposed to new
things, precisely because they have rather intellectual hobbies and they have
less free time due to reading a lot.

~~~
tmsh
Good point. And I don't know how the vocabulary test was made. I think the
monotonicity can be explained by, in general, people who read marginally more
are marginally exposed to more things (even after to discounting for the
important fact that there is less free time and they're more intellectual,
etc.). But it's a very good point.

It seems like there are a lot of different factors.

------
psyklic
From another article: "In the 1998 to 2004 data, each point higher on the
Wordsum test causes a $1,200 decrease in income."
[<http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/07/higher_intellig.html>]

So where does "smartness" fit in? I hate to imply causation, but maybe:

"Wordsat smartness" -> annoying person who uses big words other people don't
understand all the time -> social isolation -> less money -> alcohol!

Whew!

------
amk
I don't know about the word test scores but the rest of the demographic info
doesn't look right. For instance, the second chart. The data suggests that
statistically, the odds of a girl drinking are higher than an african-american
drinking.

By the way, very very misleading graphs. I was totally shocked by going
through them. I had to read the comments here to realize what was being shown.

------
GFischer
Apparently, here is the vocabulary test used at the GSS and referenced in the
last graph:

[http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2010/04/gss-vocabulary-
test....](http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2010/04/gss-vocabulary-test.html)

~~~
KirinDave
At first I was like, “Oh shit how can anyone not get a 10, these words are
easy. Society is doomed!”

Then I saw how the choices were actually really strange for some of them. For
example, “Emanate” is meant to be matched to “come”, but that's a very poor
match. Similarly “Space” matching to ”room” is a tricky sense.

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matrix
I was curious where the data came from, since the article didn't really
explain it. Here's the details:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Social_Survey>

------
pw0ncakes
I thought this was a linkbait title, but it actually is the title of the
original article.

One of many thoughts appropriate to this dubious claim: often, questions like,
"Do you smoke pot?" or "Do you drink?" have more to do with identity than with
the actual frequency of consumption.

I'd bet that people "of class"-- well-to-do, educated, liberal-- are more
likely to say "yes" to the question, "Do you smoke pot?" However, a large
number of such people are those who haven't smoked for 20 years-- those who
wouldn't be averse to smoking pot if it came their way, but haven't looked for
it or been near it in a long time. (I have no problem with people who use
marijuana, but the fact is that to get regular access often requires
association with "unclassy" characters, because most drug dealers are creepy
and the process of asking for access is degrading.)

If you look at who is actually smoking pot, and weight by frequency of
consumption, I'd guess that the correlation goes away. Same with alcohol.

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claymmm
People always shoot the messenger for pointing this out, so I'll expect about
a million downvotes for it, but in case you case didn't know it already GNXP
is the cryptoracist camp along with Charles Murray and Steve Sailer.
Seriously, check out some of the comments.

Okay, now you can downvote me.

~~~
puppetsock
In other words, we should dismiss a priori the possibility of any racial
_correlates_?

------
disturbances
> I knew that blacks were more likely to be teetotalers, and expected that
> women would be as well.

Is there anything scientific about this at all? The whole article sounds
fishy.

