
Mistakes, we’ve drawn a few - tysone
https://medium.economist.com/mistakes-weve-drawn-a-few-8cdd8a42d368
======
spectramax
I applaud the fact that they admit to the mistakes and owning up to them.
Converting abstract relationships into semiological representation is not
exactly well cut science. There is a bit of experience and discovery in being
able to take complex data and present it in a clear manner.

Now, only if we can get publications like Bloomberg to admit their mistake
about "The Big Hack" but off-topic and I digress. I've always enjoyed
Economist and its British humor, and this article just adds more credibility.

~~~
chiaro
Or the classic least norwegian squares method of regression in the WSJ

[http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/laffer.png](http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/laffer.png)

~~~
lb1lf
We (Norway) cheat a bit, though - we're a small (5M and change citizens)
economy with a massive oil extraction industry which we tax to high heaven,
hence the large fraction of GDP raised by taxes.

Regular corporate tax is 22%, whereas anything involving pumping hydrocarbons
out of the ground is taxed with an additional 56%, leading to a tax rate of
78%.

In 2018, this led to more than $13B in taxes being paid from oil companies.
Joe Q. Public, for comparison, paid $35B or so in income tax.

~~~
tomp
I think that's his/her point. Norway is obviously an outlier, so fitting the
curve _through_ Norway makes absolutely no sense!

~~~
lb1lf
D'oh, of course.

In my defense, I hardly slept last night courtesy of a three-year-old with the
chicken pox, and I hadn't had my morning gallon of coffee when I replied.

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oritron
The most surprising conclusion was about the final plot discussed, regarding
scientific publications. The author says that it contains too much information
and is confusing for that reason, and postulates it might be better to
summarize the different fields and plot as a single variable.

The truth is, it is not a confusing visualization. There is no rule that says
to remove variables for the sake of reducing a variable count. It is useful to
see that health sciences stands apart from other fields, and other points can
be seen as a cluster or examined more deeply by the reader. It is actually one
of the best plots shown in the entire article.

In effect it is a grouped bar chart, a visualization that many publications
shy away from in favor of stacked bars. While that is good for showing a
total, it is often a less effective way of visualizing data—it's difficult to
compare magnitude of anything but the base bar. That fault can be seen in the
stacked bars of the budget surplus example, which still exists for the
improved version.

At any rate, I'm glad the Economist is looking to improve their visualizations
and isn't afraid to share mistakes.

~~~
SiempreViernes
The precise statement was that _at that size_ it was confusing and hard to
read, which I think is a fair statement.

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nerdponx
On the dog weight and trade deficit charts, I'd argue there's merit to the
originals. The essence of a linear relationship between two data series X and
Y is that X and Y are _identical_ up to position and scale. The "better"
charts represent the data more accurately, but the original charts make it
easier to see the relationship between the two series.

Also the trade deficit chart is confusing in part because the negative sign
isn't obviously a negative sign.

Edit: the last chart is fine. It's maybe not very sexy, and it takes a moment
to absorb, but the data is clearly displayed.

~~~
kbenson
The dog weight one is a good case of how you can futz with numbers to imply a
greater relationship than is present. I think the second chart is much better
in that respect. If you're doubling the relative range of one of a double
scale to make stuff look like it fits, that's not exactly being forthright.

> but the original charts make it easier to see the relationship between the
> two series.

Well, as the article says, if it looks like they're a perfect fit when they
definitely aren't, that's probably beyond making something clearer and going
into convincing people of something that the chart doesn't really imply.

> the last chart is fine. It's maybe not very sexy, and it takes a moment to
> absorb, but the data is clearly displayed.

Totally agree on this. It takes a bit to digest, but that's because there's a
lot of information imparted.

~~~
function_seven
There's no reason the scale needs to be the same when comparing measurements
in totally different dimensions.

The weight is roughly a volume measurement while the neck size is a linear
one. Also, if the necks were measured in inches, you'd end up at roughly the
original chart, even being mindful of the scaling on each axis.

I think the left chart is actually the better one. It does a good job showing
the correlation between neck size and weight.

~~~
Quenty
It’s a matter of percent change. It shows the same relative percent change on
the scale, which feels more accurate.

I prefer the revised graph.

~~~
gowld
> > The weight is roughly a volume measurement while the neck size is a linear
> one.

so "percent change" is a different dimension in the two data sets,
respectively.

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itamarst
My favorite mistake The Economist made was a survey they ran. They compared UK
to US, and supposedly one of the questions was:

What better explains the origins of the Earth?

A) Evolution.

B) The Bible.

It's unclear whether they literally asked that question, or they asked about
origins of life and just had a copyediting mistake in the summary of the
results. They ignored my letter about it, though, so I suspect the former :)

~~~
mfoy_
That's funny, because technically the answer is B.

~~~
jessermeyer
This thread is assuming biological evolution, but dynamic systems in general
evolve. Maybe I'm stretching the word too much, but the question was a trick
question to begin with.

~~~
mfoy_
I mean... The dictionary definition of "evolve" is basically "things happened
over time". But especially increasing in complexity, although it's not a
necessary qualification.

So basically, as long as there is any temporal component, it "evolved". But
I'd argue that _saying it happened_ doesn't explain _how_ it happened. So the
"correct" answer is still B.

~~~
jessermeyer
Is your statement 'Saying that it evolved is not saying how it evolved.'?

We have planetary and solar system dynamics fairly well understood in terms of
models and matching that with observational data. So I think an astrophysicist
could make the how argument from an evolutionary perspective.

~~~
mfoy_
Your initial point was that we should not assume "Evolution" means biological
evolution. Let's remember that and proceed:

In a pedantic sense, saying that "it evolved" _means nothing_ because
_everything_ "evolved" for some suitable non-Darwinian interpretation of what
"evolved" means. For example, if you're willing to _not_ assume "Evolution"
implies "biological evolution" then why not argue that woman _evolved_ from
man's rib as per the Bible and that man "evolved" from dirt?

"Evolution" without explicit context, and perhaps additional qualification
(e.g. "the evolution of our solar system") means _that_ as much as it means
_nothing_.

------
dmd
It is a family tradition in my house to pore through the Economist every week
looking for the worst visualization. So, props to them for admitting they have
a problem.

~~~
dx034
Wouldn't you find more in other newspapers? I generally find Economist
visualizations surprisingly well made. Articles like this show that they're
actively trying to improve.

~~~
gowld
If it's not a challenge, it's not fun.

------
kurtisc
I've noticed the scales issue happens a lot with claims about markets. A story
will say something like 'Asset A plummets among bad event X' with a daily
graph of the price. When you look back at the weekly or monthly graph, though,
you find that it's well within normal fluctuations and isn't even a low for
that period.

------
samfriedman
For more reading on poor viz & better redesigns, I recommend Junk Charts by
Kaiser Fung:
[https://junkcharts.typepad.com/](https://junkcharts.typepad.com/)

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rwmj
I'm an Economist subscriber and so read it most weeks, but honestly their
charts and visualisations are often terrible. I think they could read a bit of
Tufte and reduce chart junk as a starting point. This article does make some
other good improvements though, so there is hope.

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lwansbrough
I really like the third graph redesign -- the one with the average/trend
overlaid on top of the fainter data points. Is there a name for that?

~~~
peteretep
I'd describe it as a scatter plot with an added trend line / line of best fit.

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minikites
My college statistics textbook had an entire problem set where every question
was dedicated to a bad or misleading chart from "USA Today". These are mild in
comparison, but it's important to get visualizations correct, given how
powerful they are at communicating ideas and concepts.

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haberman
This is a confusing graph from the Economist that I snipped when I saw it in
2013. Very difficult to wrap your head around what is being shown here:
[https://pasteboard.co/I7ttkG5.png](https://pasteboard.co/I7ttkG5.png)

~~~
navane
I assume you wrapped your head around it by now, but I'll explain it anyway.

Bottom right; barely 5% of the world population is equal or richer than the
average US citizen. 20% of the world population has at least 25% of the
average US citizen, or 80% of the world has less than than 25% of the average
US citizen.

Note that a graph of the US alone would look about the same.

I think its a highly informative graph, that you will not get at a glance.
Another mistake they noted in the article:

"Another odd thing is the choice of colour. In an attempt to emulate Labour’s
colour scheme, we used three shades of orange/red to distinguish between
Jeremy Corbyn, other MPs and parties/groups. We don’t explain this. While the
logic behind the colours might be obvious to a lot of readers, it perhaps
makes little sense for those less familiar with British politics."

I think it's a bonus if you can make a graph have extra layers of information
for the informed reader. In literature this his highly regarded. Why not in
data visualization?

~~~
simonh
>Note that a graph of the US alone would look about the same.

Well, 50% of the population would be richer than the average US citizen rather
than 5%.

~~~
carlob
Median vs average?

The GDP per capita in the US is around 60k, that's around the 77th percentile:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\)_per_capita)

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pcvarmint
Such as calling Ben Shapiro an "alt-right sage"? [0]

0\. [https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/03/28/inside-
the-...](https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/03/28/inside-the-mind-of-
ben-shapiro-a-radical-conservative)

------
auraham
I enjoyed the post. I am not familiar with the website, but from the examples
in the post, it seems that only the x-axis is labeled. It can be hard to
understand the meaning of a plot when only one axis is labeled.

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arc_of_descent
I'm currently reading Statistics for Dummies, and these kind of techniques
used i.e. wrong scale, incorrect starting point, etc is explained very well.
Highly recommended.

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cartercole
they did ben so dirty :(

