the reason why I brought this graph up is this because we made this graph for
the reason that we have this nice result we ran this regression we did a lot of
work believe me lots of research it looks like a scatter plot but every
point require is the output of an analysis so it's a big deal anyway we
did this and I wanted to display the result make it clear to people and then
when i did that we made this graph and they realize that the lines weren't
parallel and it turned out that was the most important part of the story
so the graph was even though it was supposed to be just to show off
it turned out that research was important so actually that is sort of
the point is that there are many goals or graphics and two of the ones that
were familiar with are showing off and learning from the data and they're not
really separate I'm okay
outside of a couple of just some very simple examples that I'm I'm purposely
giving i'm going to give three really very simple stupid examples to just
drive home the point
this first this is a graph that French vai rolar or at least bacteria bacterial
maybe on the web a couple years ago and you know i saw this is this so
african countries by GDP it's like well South Africa is the biggest one what's
number two let's try to figure out what's going on here like Nigeria there
but will they have a lot of people don't they like I'm I'm thinking all this is
really bad like as a statistician what would i do so as a statistician well I i
do something like this is this sort of monstrosity well this is much clearer if
you want to compare the countries by GDP and then of course i could renormalize
them by population
I intense if your goal is to display these twelve numbers there is very
little doubt that this is a better way to display 12 numbers have been this
how do you compare these different areas on the other hand like it sort of misses
the point because those twelve numbers have been sitting on wikipedia for
forever and yet people weren't looking at them so the point of this graph is to
get people's attention and it did that very well until I just think it's very
hard and it's my fault - like I've been for years
I'll see grass like this and say oh I hate this graph it's so stupid but then
that's missing the point
the purpose of this graph is not to be able to quickly compare
error the GBP of Ghana to the GBT gdp of Libya like who would want to do that in
the first place
the . this graph is to make a dramatic statement and to provide information
Chris anyone could say South Africa is the biggest economy but this actually
draws the reader in so I respect this allows the reader to do this at the same
. if you want to understand more structure there's a limit to this kind
of thing and display like this
although uglier I'm is a bit more open ended and it suggests that we could move
forward and really that's the point of my talk is that both of these have
virtues and since I think that we have to recognize both kinds of virtues and
that's positive and it's also negative we should be able to criticize someone
should be able to criticize this graph by saying it's not grabby and someone
should be able to criticize this graph by saying it doesn't show these
information while there should be nothing wrong with criticizing as long
as you realize were contributing
uh here's another example that I'm sorry about the resolution
this one really did go viral a couple years ago it's a each line is the
country on the Left axis is the amount spent per person on health care in that
country and then the right out the right axis is the life expectancy in the
country
you know there's one graph where this one country that line where they spend
so much on health care it's off the chart but their average of my life
expectancy I can't remember what the country is where they spend more on
health care than the cabinet and maybe i can i can i can remember anyway so this
is really striking now I saw this graph and I was like 2 i'm planning to
variables and of course it's that old sheet to make it go off the scale the
ground that's because you make the scale the graph so it goes up like I could put
the border of the room right here and i'll be talking to you from outside the
room does that mean I'm freezing all the sudden know
ok so here it is this is much clearer actually this is better
statistically USA still stand that was the mystery country USA still stands out
i'm but also you see that there is a positive correlation among all the other
countries which is very hard to see there that there's a positive
correlation between the two axes and the other hand of course this thing is the
thing that that went viral
until again I want us to be able to see how we can do better
but while still recognized
singing what made this special on and then is that right
should I just concluded that and you don't need to see another example I
think to 2 examples makes the point on
and so what I want to do here on just emphasized that the click-through
solution
so my solution is that we have the grabby graph and you click and then you
get the data rich graph and then you click again and you get the spreadsheet
and then people can analyze the data and I think we as producers of graphs and
producers of knowledge i think we should be doing that we should be collaborating
with people who have all these different skills and not thinking we have to do
one sort of display or another